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Hk\.!amin and Deborah Franklin (See F. 161) 



TRAVELS IN 
PHILADELPHIA 



BY 
CHRISTOPHER MORLEY 

with drawings by 
Frank H. Taylor 



What could be more delightful than to have in the same few minutes 
all the fascinating terrors of going abroad combined with all the himiane 
security of coming home again? What could be better than to have all 
the fun of discovering South Africa without the disgusting necessity of 
landing there? What could be more glorious than to brace one's self 
up to discover New South Wales and then realize, with a gush of happy 
tears, that it was really Old South Wales. . . . How can we con- 
trive to be at once astonished at the world and yet at home in it? How 
can this world give us at once the fascination of a strange town and the 
comfort and honour of being our own town? 

G. K. CHESTERTON 

Orthodoxy 



PHILADELPHIA 

DAVID McKAY COMPANY, Publishers 
604-608 South Washington Square 






Copyright, 1920, by 
David McKay Company 



WM • F. FELL CO • PRINTERS 
PHILADELPHIA 






Affectionately Dedicated To 

BART HALEY 

(The Soothsayer) 

JIMMY CRAVEN 

(The Epicure) 

ROY HELTON 

(The Mountaineer) 

MY GENIAL TUTORS IN THE DELICATE ART 
OF LIVING IN PHILADELPHL\ 



AUTHOR'S NOTE 

These sketches were all written for the Philadel- 
phia Evening Public Ledger, which has kindly given 
permission for their reissue. They were put down 
under necessary conditions of haste, and I fear 
that scrupulous and better informed lovers of the 
city may find much to censure. But they were not 
intended as a formal portrait, merely as snap- 
shots of vivacious phases of the life of today. 
Philadelphia, most Uvable and lovable of large 
cities, makes a unique appeal to the meditative 
stroller. 

I am very grateful indeed to Mr. Frank H. 
Taylor for letting me include some of his delight- 
ful drawings, which preserve the outlines and 
graces of so many Philadelphia scenes. 

Pbiladelphia 
December 29, 1919 



INTRODUCTION 

The publishers of these ''Travels" have asked 
me to write an introduction to this little volume: 
it needs no introduction, but I gladly comply, 
for I am happy to link my name with that of the 
author. 

Occasionally, on red letter days, for two j^ears 
past these papers have been appearing in the 
Evening Ledger, and many of us have turned to 
the editorial page on which they were printed to 
quiet our nerves preparatory to a glance at the 
stock market column to discover what has hap- 
pened to our investments. And reassured on this 
point, it may be, or discouraged, we have turned 
back to re-read slowly these httle essays which, 
with a humor all their own and a strong local 
flavor, have a quality which we supposed had 
disappeared with the essayists who were writing 
in London, just a century ago. Finally, the 
"Travels" became so popular that I have seen 
men carefully cut them out with their penknives 
and place them in their wallets to pass on to some 
appreciative friend later, with the remark, " Have 
you seen that last thing of Morley's? I cut it 
out for you." 

And so it is that these seeming ephemera have 
been thought worthy of being collected in a vol- 
ume, and rightly too, for they have a charm which 
we shall seek for in vain elsewhere. Which we 
shall seek for in vain in Philadelphia, perhaps I 
should have written, for with the publication of 



vm irNinujJU^^iiuiN 

these papers, Christopher Morley, the well- 
beloved "Kit" of his many friends, shakes the 
dust of Philadelphia from his ample feet and be- 
takes himself to "fresh woods and pastures new," 
or to drop the elegance of Milton, he goes to New 
York, there to create in the columns of the 
Evening Post that atmosphere of amiability which 
we have come to regard as inseparable from him. 
Of course, some of us will resolve to submit to 
the inconvenience of awaiting at Broad Street 
Station the arrival of the four o'clock train from 
New York which usually brings to us the after- 
noon edition of the Evening Post, but I fear that 
after a time our resolution will go the way of 
good resolutions generally, and that we will force 
ourselves to be content with second best. For 
after Morley, whatever comes will be second best. 
Where else shall we find simplicity, the gayety, 
the kindly humor, and the charm of this gentle 
essayist? Who, other than Morley, could make 
a walk out Market Street of interest and a source 
of fun? His little skit in the manner of Karl 
Baedeker is inimitable. Who, but he, would 
think of calling Ridge Avenue, that diagonal 
that passes over the shoulder of Philadelphia, 
"the Sam Brown belt"? Who, but he, could 
find in the commonplace, sordid, and depressing 
streets of our city, subjects for a sheaf of dainty 
little essays, as delightful as they are unique? 
For say what you will, to most of us the streets 
of Philadelphia are dirty and depressing. But 



INTRODUCTION ix 

Morley sees everything — not red but rosy — which 
is a very different matter. 

It is a thousand pities that Morley agreed to 
go to New York just at the arrival of our new 
Mayor, who has promised that our streets shall 
be swept and garnished, — and I, for one, believe 
that he will keep his word, — but perhaps he is 
leaving Philadelphia on this very account, for 
I remember that neatness never had any charm 
for him. Have we not, all of us, read of the 
condition of his roll-top desk? 

Be this as it may. We are to lose him, and I, 
for one, am desolate. Students and men of the 
world we have, but of ''saunterers," in these days 
of big business, of "snappers-up of unconsidered 
trifles," we have too few. We have all kinds of 
cusses but Autoly cusses. We can ill spare Morley 
to New York. But wherever he goes, our good 
wishes go with him, and he may yet, when he 
has had his fling in the *'metrolopus," as Francis 
Wilson used to call the great city, rid himself of 
his motley and, assuming a collegiate gown, re- 
turn to his Alma Mater, Haverford, there to 
carry on the splendid tradition of his and my old 
friend Gummere; for beneath his assumption 
of the vagabond, Morley has the learning as well 
as the tastes and traditions of the scholar, as will 
be evident to the reader of these pages. 

A. Edward Newton 
Daylesford, Pa., 
January 20, 1920 



CONTENTS 

PAQE 

Benjamin Franklin 7 

Sauntering 10 

Little Italy 15 

Meeting the Gods for a Dime 21 

Wild Words We Have Known 24 

The Enchanted Village 28 

Trailing Mrs. Trollope 33 

The Haverford Comes Home 39 

Marooned in Philadelphia 45 

The Ronaldson Cemetery 50 

Willow Grove 56 

Chestnut Street from a Fire Escape 60 

The Parkway, Henry Ford and Billy the Bean Man. . . 64 

Wildey Street 69 

Hog Island 75 

South Broad Street 81 

The Recluse of Franklin Square 87 

Catterina of Spring Garden Street 92 

A Slice of Sunlight 98 

Up the Wissahickon 103 

Darkness Visible 108 

On the Way to Baltimore 115 

The Paoli Local 119 

Travels in Philadelphia — As They Would Be Reported 

by Some Eminent Travelers 124 

To League Island and Back 129 

The Whitman Centennial 135 

Anne Gilchrist's House 141 

Along the Green Neshaminy 147 

Penn Treaty Park 152 

The Indian Pole 156 

Claud Joseph Warlow 162 

xi 



xii CONTENTS 



PAGE 

At the Mint 167 

Stonehouse Lane and The Neck 174 

Valley Forge 178 

The Mercantile Library 184 

Meditations on Oysters 190 

Darby Creek 192 

Darby Revisited 197 

The Happy Valley 200 

OurOldDesk 206 

Calling on William Penn 211 

Madonnas of the Curb 217 

The Paradise Special 222 

Up to Valley Green 228 

On the Sightseeing Bus 233 

September Afternoon 238 

Broad Street Station 244 

The Shore in September 250 

Putting the City to Bed 259 



TRAVELS IN PHILADELPHIA 

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 

Jan. 17, 1919 

Benjamin Franklin, sagacious and witty, 
The greatest of all who have lived in this city, 
Earnest and frugal and very discerning, 
Always industrious, bent upon learning. 
Athlete, ambassador, editor, printer. 
Merchant and scientist, wTiter, inventor. 
None was more canny or shrewder of brain. 
None was more practical or more humane. 
None was e'er wiser 

With common sense ripe, 
Great advertiser 

And founder of type. 

Troubles he suffered, but he didn't dodge any: 
Born the fifteenth of a numerous progeny 
(Seventeen children Josiah had sired, 

A whole little font of good lower-case types; 
A fact that the census man must have admired — 
I think old Josiah might well have worn 
stripes. 
But that was in Boston where folks are proUfic) 
He passed through a boyhood by no means pacific. 
Through most of his teens, young Benjamin lent 

his 
Best efforts to being his brother's apprentice. 
But Jimmy was crusty — they didn't get on. 
And one autumn morning young Benny was gone. 
He vowed he would make his sour kinsman look 

silly. 
And so he took ship and descended on Philly. 



8 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 

The very first thought that came into his nob 
(After buying some buns) was to look for a job. 
So up from the ferry 

Our Benjamin stalked, 
And hungrily, very, 

Ate buns as he walked. 
A certain blithe flapper, 

A whimsical lass. 
Observed the young strapper 
And thought he lacked class, 
And so, in the manner of feminine strafing. 
The superior damsel just couldn't help laughing; 
But Ben, unabashed by this good-natured chaffing. 
Although young Deborah 

Was certainly rude, 
He thought he'd ignore her 
And cheerfully chewed. 
With the best kind of repartee later he parried her, 
For seven years afterward he went and married 
her. 

Well, you all know of his varied successes, 
Electrical hobbies and his printing presses. 
See how his mind, with original oddity 
Touched and found interest in every commodity : 
Busy with schemes to domesticate lightning. 
Inventing a stove for home warming and brighten- 
ing, 
Scribbhng a proverb, a joke or a sermon, 
PubHshing too (what I am loth to mention 
For fear of its bringing up any dissension) 
Printing, I say, a newspaper in German — 
Also, for which he's remembered by most. 
He founded the Saturday Evening Post, 
For which Irvin Cobb has consistently praised 

him — 
And its circulation would much have amazed him! 



BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 9 

Busy with matters too many for telling — 
Saving of daylight and simplified spelling — 
Still his chief happiness, as one may think, 
Came when he found himself dabbUng in ink, 
And all his writings, though slight he did think 

'em, 
Brought him a very respectable income. 
His was a mind that was chiefly empirical, 
Not at all given to theory or miracle — 

Nothing chimerical, 

Nothing hysterical, — 
Though he wrote verses, they weren't very lyrical, 
And he was touched with a taste for satirical. 
Though his more weighty affairs were so numerous 
Yet he was quaintly and constantly humorous, 
Loved Philadelphians, but when he was one of 

them 
Nothing he hked quite so well as make fun of them. 

Scarce an invention since his time has burst 

But Benjamin FrankUn had thought of it first; 

Indeed it would cause me no ejaculations 

To hear he suggested the new League of Nations. 

He truly succeeded in most that he tried, he 

Confounded his enemies, and when he died he 

Was guiltless of sin except being untidy. 

He died of old age, not of illness or tumor. 

And wrote his own epitaph, full of good humor. 

Every tradition and custom he broke. 

This first Philadelphian who dared make a joke! 



10 SAUNTERING 



SAUNTERING 

Some famous lady — who was it? — used to say 
of anyone she richly despised that he was "a, 
saunterer." I suppose she meant he was a mere 
trifler, a lounger, an idle stroller of the streets. It 
is an ignominious confession, but I am a confirmed 
saunterer. I love to be set down haphazard among 
unknown byways; to saunter with open eyes, 
watching the moods and humors of men, the shapes 
of their dwelhngs, the criss-cross of their streets. 
It is an implanted passion that grows keener and 
keener. The everlasting lure of round-the-corner, 
how fascinating it is ! 

I love city squares. The most interesting per- 
sons are always those who have nothing special 
to do: children, nurses, policemen, and actors at 
1 1 o'clock in the morning. These are always to be 
found in the park; by which I mean not an enor- 
mous sector of denatured countryside with bridle 
paths, fishponds and sea lions, but some broad 
patch of turf in a shabby elbow of the city, striped 
with pavements, with plenty of sun-warmed 
benches and a cast-iron zouave erected about 1873 
to remind one of the horrors of commemorative 
statuary. Children scuffle to and fro; dusty men 
with spiculous chins loll on the seats; the uncouth 
and pathetic vibrations of humankind are on 
every side. 

It is entrancing to walk in such places and cata- 



SAUNTERING 11 

logue all that may be seen. I jot down on scraps 
of paper a list of all the shops on a side street; 
the names of tradesmen that amuse me; the ab- 
surd repartees of gutter children. Why? It 
amuses me and that is sufficient excuse. From 
now until the end of time no one else will ever 
see life with my eyes, and I mean to make the 
most of my chance. Just as Thoreau compiled a 
Domesday Book and kind of classified directory 
of the sights, sounds and scents of Walden (care- 
fully recording the manners of a sandbank and the 
prejudices of a woodlouse or an apple tree) so I 
love to annotate the phenomena of the city. I 
can be as solitary in a city street as ever Thoreau 
was in Walden. 

And no Walden sky was ever more blue than 
the roof of Washington square this morning. Sit- 
ting here reading Thoreau I am entranced by the 
mellow flavor of the young summer. The sun is j ust 
goodly enough to set the being in a gentle toasting 
muse. The trees confer together in a sleepy 
wliisper. I have had buckwheat cakes and syrup 
for breakfast, and eggs fried both recto and verso; 
good foundation for speculation. I puff cigarettes 
and am at peace with myself. Many a worthy 
waif comes to lounge beside me; he glances at 
my scuffed boots, my baggy trousers; he knows 
me for one of the fraternity. By their boots ye 
shall know them. Many of those who have 
abandoned the race for this world's honors have a 
shrewdness all their own. What is it Thoreau 



12 ISAUJNTEKlJNli 

says, with his penetrative truth? — ''Sometimes 
we are inclined to class those who are once and a 
half witted with the half witted, because we ap- 
preciate only a third part of their wit." By the 
time a man is thirty he should be able to see what 
life has to offer, and take what dishes on the menu 
agree with him best. That is whole wit, indeed, 
or wit-and-a-half. And if he finds his pleasure 
on a park bench in ragged trousers let tiim lounge 
then, with good heart. I welcome him to the 
goodly fellowship of saunterers, an acolyte of the 
excellent church of the agorolaters! 

These meditations are incurred in the ancient 
and noble city of Philadelphia, which is a sur- 
prisingly large town at the confluence of the 
Biddle and Drexel famiUes. It is wholly sur- 
rounded by cricket teams, fox hunters, beagle 
packs, and the Pennsylvania Railroad. It has a 
very large zoological garden, containing carnivora, 
herbivora, scrappleivora, and a man from New 
York who was interned here at the time of the 
Centennial Exposition in 1876. The principal 
manufactures are carpets, life insurance premiums, 
and souvenirs of Independence Hall. Philadel- 
phia was the first city to foresee the advantages 
of a Federal constitution and oatmeal as a break- 
fast food. 

And as one walks and speculates among all this 
visible panorama, beating one's brains to catch 
some passing snapshots of it, watching, listening, 
imagining, the whole hullabaloo becomes ex- 



SAUNTERING 13 

traorclinarily precious. The great faulty hodge- 
podge of the city, its very pavements and house- 
corners, becomes vividly dear. One longs to 
clutch the whole meaning in some sudden embrace 
— to utter some testament of affection that will 
speak plain truth. '^Friday I tasted hfe," said 
Emily Dickinson, the American Blake. ''It was 
a vast morsel." Something of that baffled exul- 
tation seizes one in certain moments of stroUing, 
when the afternoon sun streams down Chestnut 
Street on the homeward pressing crowd, or in 
clear crisp mornings as one walks through Wash- 
ington Square. Emily utters her prodigious 
parables in flashing rockets that stream for an 
instant in the dusk, then break and sink in colored 
balls. Most of us cannot ejaculate such dazzles 
of flame. We pick and poke and stumble our 
thoughts together, catching at a truth and losing 
it again. 

Agreeable vistas reward the eye of the resolute 
stroller. For instance, that delightful cluster of 
back gardens, old brick angles, dormer windows 
and tall chimneys in the little block on Orange 
street west of Seventh. Orange street is the little 
alley just south of Washington Square. In the 
clean sunlight of a fresh May morning, with 
masses of green trees and creepers to set off the 
old ruddy brick, this quaint huddle of buildings 
composes into a delightful picture that has been 
perpetuated by the skilful pencil of Frank H. 
Taylor. A kindly observer in the Dreer seed 



14 SAUNTERING 

warehouse, which backs upon Orange street, 
noticed me prowling about and offered to take 
me up in his elevator. From one of the Dreer 
windows I had a fascinating glimpse down upon 
these roofs and gardens. One of them is the rear 
yard of the Italian consulate at 717 Spruce street. 
Another is the broader garden of The Catholic 
Historical Society, in which I noticed with amuse- 
ment Nicholas Biddle's big stone bathtub sunning 
itself. Then there is the garden of the adorable 
little house at 725 Spruce street, which is par- 
ticularly interesting because, when seen from the 
street, it appears to have no front door. The attic 
window of that house is just our idea of what an 
attic window ought to be. 

A kind of philosophy distills itself in the 
mind of the saunterer. Painfully tedious as 
people often are, they have the sublime quality 
of interesting one. Not merely by what they 
say, but often by what they don't say. Their 
eyes — how amazing is the thought of all those 
millions of little betraying windows ! How bravely 
they struggle to express what is in them. A 
modern essayist has spoken of ''the haggard neces- 
sities of parlor conversation." But the hfe of the 
streets has no such conventions. It is real: it 
comes hot from the pan. It is as informal, as 
direct and as unpretentious as the greetings of 
dogs. It is a never-failing remedy for the blues. 



LITTLE ITALY 15 



LITTLE ITALY 

There are three gentlemen with whom I have 
been privileged, on happy occasions, to take 
travels in Philadelphia. The first is the Moun- 
taineer, a tall vagabond, all bone and gristle, mem- 
ber emeritus of the Hoboes' Union, who can tramp 
all day on seven cents' worth of milk chocolate, 
knows the ins and outs of every queer trade and is 
a passionate student of back alleys and mean 
streets. Pawnshops, groggeries, docks and fac- 
tories make his mouth water with the astounding 
romance of every day. 

The second is the Soothsayer, an amiable vision- 
ary whose eye dotes on a wider palette. Sooth- 
sayer by profession, artist and humanitarian at 
heart, he is torn and shaken on every street by the 
violent paradoxes of his hvely intellect. A beggar 
assaults his sense of pity — but rags are so pictur- 
esque ! A vast hotel, leaking golden flame at every 
window against the green azure of the dusk, fasci- 
nates his prismatic eyeball — but how about the 
poor and humble? Treading the wide vistas of the 
Parkway in a sunset flush he is transported by the 
glory of the vision. Scouting some infamous alley 
of smells he would blast the whole rottenness from 
the earth. He never knows whether the city is a 
sociological nightmare or an Arabian color-box. 

And the third is the Epicure. In person very 
similar to Napoleon the Third, late emperor of the 



16 LITTLE ITALY 

French, some mysterious tincture of the Mediter- 
ranean moves in his strictly Saxon blood. A man 
of riotous and ungovernable humor, frequently 
halting on the streets until his paroxysms of out- 
rageous mirth will permit further locomotion, the 
only thing he never laughs at is food. He sees the 
city not as a vast social riddle, nor as a network of 
heavenly back-alleys, but as a waste of irrelevant 
architecture, dotted here and there with oases of 
good meals. Mention some spot in the city and his 
eye will brighten like a newly sucked glass marble. 
''Oh, yes," he cries, ''that's just round the corner 
from the Cafe Pancreas, where they have those 
admirable ortolans!" To eat a meal in company 
with the Epicure is like watching a great artist at 
work. He studies the menu with the bitter con- 
centration of a sculptor surveying the block of 
marble from which the statue is to be chiseled. He 
does not assassinate his appetite at one swoop with 
mere sum total of victuals. He gently woos it to 
annihilation, so that he himself can hardly tell just 
at what point it dies. He eats with the skill and 
cunning of a champion chess player, forgoing a 
soup or an entree in the calculating spirit of Lasker 
or Marshall, sacrificing pawns in order to exe- 
cute some coup elsewhere on the board. Waiters, 
with that subtle instinct of theirs, know as soon as 
they see that delicately rounded figure enter the 
salle a manger, that here is a man to be reckoned 
with. 

You may imagine, then, my privilege in being 



LITTLE ITALY 17 



able to accompany the Epicure the other day to 
the ItaUan market at Ninth and Christian streets, 
where he purposed to look over the stalls. It was a 
day of entrancing sunlight, when all that lively 
district of Little Italy leaped and trembled in the 
fullness of light and appetizing fluent air. One 
saw a secret pathos in the effort to reproduce in 
the flat dull streets of a foreign city something of 
the color and mirth of Mediterranean soil. One 
often wonders what fantastic dream or illusion — 
was it only a steamship poster? — led so many 
citizens of the loveliest land on earth to forsake 
their blue hills and opal valleys to people the cheer- 
less byways of American towns? What does Little 
Italy think of us and our climate in the raw, bitter 
days of a western winter? Well, now that the 
letters are speeding homeward telUng of the unbe- 
lievable approach of prohibition, there will be few 
enough of those bright-eyed immigrants! 

Christian street breathes the Italian genius for 
good food. After lunching in a well-known Ital- 
ian restaurant on Catharine street, where the Epi- 
cure instructed me in the mysteries of gnocchi, 
frittura mista, rognone, scallopini al marsala and 
that marvelously potent clear coffee which seems 
to the uninstructed to taste more Hke wine than 
coffee, and has a curious shimmer of green round 
the rim of the liquid, we strolled among the pave- 
ment stalls of the Uttle market. It seems to me, 
just from a cursory study of the exhibit, that the 
secret of Italian gusto for food is that they take 



18 LITTLE ITALY 

it closer to nature, and also that they are less keen 
than we about meat. They do not buy their food 
already prepared in cardboard boxes. Fish, vege- 
tables, cheese, fruit and nuts seem to be their chief 
dehghts. Fish of every imaginable kind may be 
seen on Christian street. Some of them, small, 
flattened, silver-shining things, are packed cun- 
ningly in kegs in a curious concentric pattern so 
that the glitter of their perished eyes gleams in 
hypnotizing circles. Eels, mussels, skates, shrimps, 
cuttlefish — small pink corpses, bathed in their own 
ink — and some very tiny ocean morsels that look 
Hke white-bait. Cheeses of every kind and color, 
some of them a dull yellow and molded in a queer 
gourd-Hke shape. But the vegetables and herbs 
are the most inscrutable. Even the gastrologer 
Epicure was unable to explain them all to me. 
Chopped bayleaves, artichokes, mushrooms, 
bunches of red and green peppers, little boxes of 
dried peas, beans, powdered red pepper, wrinkled 
ohves and raisins, and strange-smelling bundles of 
herbs that smell only like straw, but which pre- 
sumably possess some strange seasoning virtue to 
those who understand them. In the windows of 
the grocers' shops j^ou will always find Funghi 
secchi della Liguria (Ligurian dried mushrooms) 
and Finocchio uso Sicilia (Fennel, SiciHan style), 
which names are poems in themselves. And, of 
course, the long Bologna sausages — and great 
round loaves of bread. 

The Italian sweet tooth is well hinted at in 



LITTLE ITALY 19 

the Christian street pasticcerias (pastry shops), 
where cakes, macaroons, biscuits and wafers of 
every color beckon to the eye. Equally chromatic 
are the windows of the bookshops, where bright 
portraits of General Diaz, King Victor and Presi- 
dent Wilson beam down upon knots of gossipers 
arguing on the sunny side of the street, and a 
magnificent edition of the Divina Commedia Hes 
side by side with Amore Proibito and I Sotterranei 
di New York. Another volume whose title is 
legible even to one with scarcely any smattering of 
tongues is II Kaiser AllTnferno! 

Some of the shops in Little Italy seem to em- 
brace a queer union of trades. For instance, one 
man announces his office as a "Funeral agent and 
detective bureau"; another, *' Bookbinder and 
flower shop." In one window may be seen elabo- 
rate plans of Signor Menotti Nanni's Ocean Float- 
ing Safe, in which transatlantic passengers are 
recommended to stow their valuables. The ship 
may sink and likewise the passengers, but in 
the Ocean Floating Safe your jewels and pri- 
vate papers will float off undamaged and roam the 
ocean until some one comes to salve them. The 
Itahan name for this ingenious device is Cassaforte 
Galleggiante, which we take to mean a swimming 
strong-box. 

No account of Christian street would be com- 
plete without at least some mention of the theatres 
between Eighth and Seventh streets. The other 
afternoon I stopped in at one of them, expecting 



20 LITTLE ITALY 

to see moving pictures, which are comprehensible 
in all languages; but instead I found two ItaUan 
comedians — a man and a woman — performing on 
an odd little stage to an audience which roared 
applause at every line. I was unable to under- 
stand a word, but the skill and grace of the per- 
formers were evident, also the suave and liquid 
versification of their lines. The manager walked 
continually up and down the aisles, rebuking every 
sound and movement other than legitimate ap- 
plause with a torrential hiss. Every time a baby 
squalled — and there were many — the manager 
sibilated Hke a python. The audience took this 
quite for granted, so evidently it is customary. 
It is a salutary lesson in modesty to attend a per- 
formance conducted in a foreign language : there is 
nothing that so rapidly impresses upon one our 
stupid provincial ignorance of most tongues but 
our own. 

Little Italy is only a few blocks away from 
Chestnut street, and yet I daresay thousands of 
our citizens hardly suspect its existence. If you 
chance to go down there about 1 o'clock some 
bright afternoon, when all the children are enjoy- 
ing the school recess, and see that laughing, romp- 
ing mass of bright-eyed young citizens, you will 
wonder whether they are to be congratulated on 
growing up in this new country of wonderful 
opportunity, or to be pitied for losing the beauty 
and old tradition of that storied peninsula so far 
away. 



MEETING THE GODS FOR A DIME ^1 



MEETING THE GODS FOR A DIME* 

If we had to choose just one street in Phila- 
delphia to the exclusion of all others, probably 
our greatest affection would be for Ludlow street. 
We have constituted ourself the president, pub- 
licity committee and sole member of the Ludlow 
Street Business Men's Association and Chamber 
of Commerce. We propose in this manifesto to 
make known to the world just where Ludlow 
street is, and why it is so fair. 

Ludlow street is not in any sense a thoroughfare. 
It does not fare through, for its course is estopped 
by several bulky buildings. It reappears here and 
there in a whimsical, tentative manner. We do 
not pretend to know all about Ludlow street, nor 
have we charted its entire course. But the pith 
and quintessence of this runnel of culture is trod 
almost daily by our earnest feet. 

Our doings with Ludlow street begin when we 
turn off Eleventh street and caress the flank of 
the Mercantile Library in an easterly gambit. 
Then, with our nose cocked for any wandering 
savors from the steaming roast beeves of a Tenth 
street ordinary well known to epicureans, we dart 
along until our progress is barred by the Federal 
Building. This necessitates a portage through 
the Federal Reserve Bank on to the roaring coast 
of Chestnut street. We double back on Ninth 



22 MEETING THE GODS FOR A DIME 

and find Ludlow reappearing just above Leary's 
Book Store. 

Here it is that our dear Ludlow street finds its 
mission and meaning in life. From the tall- 
browed facade of the Mercantile Library it has 
caught a taste for literature and against the north 
wall of Leary's it indulges itself to the full. Per- 
haps you would think it a grimy Httle alley as it 
twists bhthely round Leary's, but to us it is a 
porchway of Paradise. How many hours we have 
daUied under that httle penthouse shelter mulhng 
over the ten-cent shelves! All the rumors and 
echoes of letters find their way to Ludlow street 
sooner or later. We can lay our ear to those 
battered rows of books as to a whorled conch 
shell and hear the solemn murmur of the vast 
ocean of hterature. There we may meet the proud 
argosies or the humble derelicts of that ocean for 
ten cents. 

Yes, they all come to Ludlow street in the end. 
We have found Wentworth's Arithmetic there, 
old foe of our youth; and George Eliot, and 
Porter (Jane) and Porter (Gene Stratton). There 
used to be a complete set of Wilkie Colhns, bound 
in blue buckram, at the genteel end of the street 
among the twenty-five centers. We were buying 
them, one by one (that was before the days of 
thrift stamps), when some plutocrat came along 
and kidnapped the whole bunch. He was an un- 
discerning plutocrat, because he took the second 
volume of ''The Woman in White" while we were 



MEETING THE GODS FOR A DIME 23 

still reading the first. When we went gayly to buy 
Volume II, lo! it was gone. 

Clark Russell is there, with his snowy canvassed 
yachts dipping and creaming through azure seas; 
and once in a while a tattered Franl^ Stockton or a 
''Female Poets of America" or "The Mysteries 
of Udolpho.'^ We have learned more about books 
from Ludlow street than ever we did in any course 
at college. We remember how we used to hasten 
thither on Saturday afternoons during our college 
days and, fortified with an automatic sandwich 
and a cup of coffee, we would spend a delirious 
three hours plundering the jeweled caves of joy. 
Best of all are the wet days when the rain drums 
on the httle shelter-roof and drips down the back 
of the fanatic. But what true fanatic heeds a 
chilled spine when his head is warmed by all the 
fires of Olympus? 

Ludlow street has quiet sorrows of its own, 
however. At the end of the ten-cent shelves, 
redeemed and exalted, even intoxicated by these 
draughts of ehxir, it staggers a Httle in its gait. 
It takes a wild reeling twist round behind Leary's, 
cHnging to that fortress of the Muses as long as it 
may. And then comes the thorn in its crown. 
Just as it has begun to fancy itself as a highbrow 
pathway to Hehcon, it finds itself wearing against 
its sober brick wall one of the Street Cleaning De- 
partment's fantastic and long-neglected ash piles. 
This abashes the poor little street so that when it 
strikes Eighth street it becomes confused, totters 



24 WILD WORDS WE HAVE KNOWN 

feebly several perches to the north and commits 
suicide in a merry httle cul de sac frequented by 
journeymen carpenters, who bury it in their 
sweet-smelling shavings. 

O blessed little Ludlow street! You are to 
Philadelphia what the old book stalls on the Seine 
bank are to Paris, what Charing Cross Road is to 
London. You are the home and haunt of the 
shyest, sweetest Muses there are: the Muses of 
old books. The Ludlow Street Business Men's 
Association, in convention assembled, drinks a 
beaker of Tom and Jerry to your health and good 
fortune! 



WILD WORDS WE HAVE KNOWN 

About noon on Saturday the city heaves a 
sigh of relief. Indeed, it begins a little earUer than 
that. About eleven-forty even the most faithful 
stenographer begins to woolgather. Letters dic- 
tated in that last half hour are likely to be ad- 
dressed ''Mrs. Henrietta Jenkins, Esq.," or ''Miss 
John Jones." The patient paying teller has to 
count over his notes three times to be sure of not 
giving a five instead of a one. The glorious 
demoralization spreads from desk to desk. No 
matter who we are or how hard we have worked, 
it is Saturday noon, and for a few hours we are 
going to forget the war and spend our pocketful 
of carefree fresh-minted minutes. As Tom Daly, 
the poet laureate of Philadelphia, puts it — 



WILD WORDS WE HAVE KNOWN 25 

''Whenever it's a Saturday and all my work is 

through, 
I take a walk on Chestnut street to see what news 

is new." 

Every Jack and Jill has his or her own ideas of a 
Saturday afternoon adventure. Our stenographer 
hastens off with a laughing group to the Automat 
and the movies. Our friend with the shell-rimmed 
spectacles, tethered by a broad silk ribbon, is 
bound to the Academy of the Fine Arts to censure 
the way Mr. Sargent has creased John D. Rocke- 
feller's trousers, and will come back bursting 
with indignation to denounce the portrait ''a 
mere chromo." We ourself hasten to the Reading 
Terminal to meet a certain pair of brown eyes 
that are sparkhng in from Marathon for lunch 
and a mobilization of spring miUinery. And 
others are off to breast the roaring gusts of March 
on the golf meads or trundle baby carriages on 
the sunny side of suburban streets. 

But there is another diversion for Saturday 
afternoon that is very dear to us, and sometimes 

we are able to coax B W to agree. That 

is to spend two or three glorious hours in the 
library muUing over the dictionaries. Talk about 
chasing a golfball over the links or following 
Theda Bara serpentining through a mile of cellu- 
loid, or stalking Tom and Jerry, mystic affinities, 
from bar to bar along Chestnut street — what can 
these excitements offer compared to a breathless 
word-hunt in the dictionaries! Words — the 



26 WILD WORDS WE HAVE KNOWN 

noblest quarry of the sportsman ! To follow their 
spoor through the jungles and champaigns of the 
English language; to flush them from their hiding 
places in dense thickets of Chaucer or Spenser, 
track them through the noble aisles of Shake- 
speare forest and find them at last perching gayly 
on the branches of O. Henry or George Ade! 
The New Oxford Dictionary, that most splendid 
monument of human scholarship, gives moving 
pictures of words from their first hatching down 
to the time when they soar like eagles in the open 
air of today. 

We know no greater joy than an afternoon spent 
with dear old Dr. Johnson's Dictionary of the 
English Language, published after seven years' 
patient labor in 1755. Probably somewhere in 
Philadelphia there is a copy of the first edition; 
but the one we know (at the Mercantile Library) 
is the revised fourth edition which the doctor put 
out in 1775. One can hardly read without a lump 
in the throat that noble preface in which Doctor 
Johnson rehearses the greatness and discourage- 
ment of his task. And who can read too often his 
rebuff to the Earl of Chesterfield, who, having 
studiously neglected to aid the lexicographer 
during the long years of his compilation, sought 
by belated flattery to associate himself with the 
vast achievement? "Is not a Patron, my Lord, 
one who looks with unconcern on a man strug- 
gling for life in the water, and, when he has 
reached ground, encumbers him with help?" 



WILD WORDS V> E HAVE KNOWN 27 

And who does not chuckle over the caustic humor 
of the doctor's definitions of words that touched 
his own rugged career? ''Lexicographer: a harm- 
less drudge;" ''book-learned: versed in books or 
literature; a term implying some sHght con- 
tempt"; "Grub street: a street in London much 
inhabited by writers of small histories, dictionaries 
and temporary poems." 

O. Henry was a great devotee of word-beagling 
in dictionaries, and his whimsical "review" of 
Webster deserves to be better known: — 

"We find on our table quite an exhaustive 
treatise on various subjects written in Mr. Web- 
ster's well-known, lucid and piquant style. There 
is not a dull line between the covers of the book. 
The range of subjects is wide, and the treatment 
light and easy without being flippant. A valu- 
able feature of the work is the arranging of the 
articles in alphabetical order, thus facilitating the 
finding of any particular word desired. Mr. 
Webster's vocabulary is large, and he always uses 
the right word in the right place. Mr. Webster's 
work is thorough, and we predict that he will be 
heard from again." 

What exhilaration can Theda Bara or the nine- 
teenth putting green offer compared to the bliss 
of pursuing through a thousand dictionary pages 
some Wild Word We Have Known, and occa- 
sionally discovering an unfamiliar creature of 
strange and dazzHng plumage? 



28 THE ENCHANTED VILLAGE 



THE ENCHANTED VILLAGE 

It was a warm morning. Everybody knew 
it was going to be hot later on and was bustling 
to get work well under way before the blaze of 
noon. The broad vista of Market street was 
dimmed by the summer haze that is part atmos- 
pheric and part gasoline vapor. And as I strolled 
up Sixth street I kept to the eastern side, which 
was still in pleasant shadow. 

Sixth street has a charming versatility. Its 
main concern in the blocks north of Market street 
seems to be machinery and hardware — cutlery 
and die stamping and tools. But it amuses itself 
with other matters — printing and bookbinding, 
oysters and an occasional smack of beer. Like 
most of our downtown streets, it is well irrigated. 
It is a jolly street for a hot day, calling out many 
an ejaculation of the eye. For instance, I cannot 
resist the office window of a German newspaper. 
The samples of job printing displayed are so de- 
lightful a medley of the relaxations which make 
the world safe for democracy. Dance Program of 
the Beer Drivers' Union, Annual Ball of the Bell- 
boys of Philadelphia, Russian Tea Party, First 
Annual Picnic of the Young People's Socialist 
League, Banquet of the Journeymen Barbers' 
Union — who would not have found honest mirth 
(and plenty of malt and hot dogs) at these enter- 
tainments! Just so we can imagine Messrs. 



THE ENCHANTED VILLAGE £9 

Lenine and Trotskj^ girding their seidels for a 
long midsummer day's junket with the Moscow- 
Soviet. There also are the faded announcement 
cards for some address by Mme. Rosika Schwim- 
mer (of Budapest), secretary of the International 
Woman Suffrage Alliance. Dear me, what has 
happened to the indefatigable Rosika since she 
and Hem-y Ford and others went bounding and 
bickering on a famous voyage to Stockholm? As 
some steamship company used to advertise, ''In 
all the world, no trip like this." 

At Race street I turned east to St. John's 
Lutheran Church. The church stands between 
Fifth and Sixth. In front of it, in a little semi- 
circle of sun-bleached grass, stands the family 
vault of Bohl Bohlen. In this vault lie Brigadier 
General W. Henry C. Bohlen, killed in action at 
Freeman's Ford on the Rappahannock River, 
August 22, 1862, and his wife, Sophie. It is 
interesting to remember that they were the grand- 
parents of the present Herr Krupp. 

The Httle burying ground behind St. John's 
is one of the most fascinating spots in Philadel- 
phia. I found George Hahn, the good-natured 
sexton, cutting the grass, and he took me round 
to look at many of the old tombstones, now mostly 
unreadable. Several Revolutionary veterans came 
to their resting in that Httle acre, among them 
Philip Summer, who died in 1814, and who is 
memorable to me because his wife was called 
Solemn. Solemn Summer — her name is carved 



30 THE ENCHANTED VILLAGE 

on the stone. If I were an artist I should love to 
picture the quaint huddle of tawny red brick 
overlooking St. John's churchyard, the vistas 
of narrow little streets, the corners and angles of 
old houses. The sunny walls of the burying 
ground are a favorite basking place for cats of 
all hues — yellow, black and gray. I envy George 
Hahn his quiet hours of work in that silent in- 
closure, but he assured me that the grass is rank 
and grows with dreadful speed. The somewhat 
desolate and forgotten air of the graveyard, with 
its broken stones and splintered trees, adds 
greatly to the wistfulness of its charm. 

Behind the churchyard is a kind of enchanted 
village. Summer street bounds the cemetery, and 
from this branch off picturesque Httle lanes — 
Randolph street, for instance, with its row of 
trim little red houses, the white and green shutters, 
the narrow cobbled footway. It was ironing day 
and, taking a furtive peep through basement 
doors, I could see the regular sweep of busy sad- 
irons on white boards. Children abound, and I 
felt greatly complimented when one infant called 
out Da-Da, as I passed. Parallel with Randolph 
street run Fairhill and Reese — tiny httle byways, 
but a kind of miniature picture of the older Phila- 
delphia. Snowy clothes were fluttering from the 
hues and pumps gushing a silver stream into wash- 
tubs. Strong white arms were sluicing and lather- 
ing the clothes, sousing them in the bluing-tinted 
water. Everywhere children were playing merrily 



THE ENCHANTED VILLAGE 31 

in the overflow. And there were window-boxes 
with bright flowers. 

At the corner of Reese and Summer streets is a 
Httle statuary workshop — a cool dim place, full 
of white figures and an elderly man doing some- 
thing mysterious with molds. I would have liked 
to hear all about his work, but as he was not very 
questionable I felt too bashful to insist. 

If I were a sketcher I would plant my easel at 
the corner of Summer and Randolph streets and 
spend a long day puffing tobacco and trying to 
pencil the quaint domestic charm of that vista. 
The children would crowd round to watch and 
comment and little by little I would learn — what 
the drawing would be only a pretext for learning — 
something of their daily mirth and tears. I would 
hear of their adventurous forays into the broad 
green space of Frankhn Square, only a few yards 
away. Of scrambles over the wall into St. John's 
churchyard when George Hahn isn't looking. Of 
the sweets that may be bought for a penny at 
the little store on the corner. I should say that 
store sells more soap than anything else. Ran- 
dolph street simply glistens with cleanhness — all 
except the upper end, where the city is too lazy 
to see that the garbage is carried away. But then 
a big city is so much more concerned "v^dth parades 
on Broad street than removing garbage from the 
hidden corners where little urchins play. 

Round the corner on Fifth street is the quaint 
cul de sac of Central place, which backs up against 



m THE ENCHANTED VUXAGE 

Reese street, but does not run through. It is a 
quiet Httle brick yard, with three green pumps 
(also plopping into washtubs) and damp garments 
fluttering out on squeaky pulley hues from the 
upper windows. The wall at the back of the court 
is topped with flowers and morning-glory vines. 
On one of the marble stoops a woman was peeling 
potatoes and across the yard a girl with a blue 
dress was washing clothes. It seemed to me Hke a 
scene out of one of Barrie's stories. 

Who is the poet or the artist of this little village 
of ruddy brick behind St. John's graveyard? Who 
will tell me how the rain lashes down those narrow 
passages during a summer storm, when the chil- 
dren come scampering home from Franklin 
Square? Who will tell me of the hot noons when 
the hokey-pokey man tolls his bright bell at the 
end of the street and mothers search their purses 
for spare pennies? Or when the dripping ice 
wagon rumbles up the cobbles with its vast store 
of great crystal and green blocks of chill and per- 
haps a few generous splinters for small mouths 
to suck? I suppose poets may have sung the 
songs of those back streets. If they haven't they 
are verv foolish. The songs are there. 



TRAILING MRS. TROLLOPE 33 



TRAILING MRS. TROLLOPE 

The Mountaineer has lent us a copy of "Do- 
mestic Manners of the Americans," in which Mrs. 
Trollope, the mother of Anthony, recorded her nu- 
merous chagrins during a three-year tour among 
the barbarians in 1827-30. 

She visited Philadelphia in the summer of 1830, 
and remarks as follows upon some scenes familiar 
to us: 

"The State House has nothing externally to 
recommend it . . . there is a very pretty in- 
closure before the Walnut street entrance, with 
good, well-kept gravel walks. . . . Near this 
inclosure is another of much the same description, 
called Washington Square. Here there was an ex- 
cellent crop of clover; but as the trees are numer- 
ous, and highl}^ beautiful, and several commodious 
seats are placed beneath their shade, it is, in spite 
of the long grass, a very agreeable retreat from 
heat and dust. It was rarely, however, that I saw 
any of these seats occupied; the Americans have 
either no leisure or no inclination for those mo- 
ments of delassement that all other people, I be- 
Heve, indulge in. Even their drams, so universally 
taken by rich and poor, are swallowed standing, 
and, excepting at church, they never have the air 
of leisure or repose. This pretty Washington 
Square is surrounded by houses on three sides, but 
(lasso!) has a prison on the fourth; it is, neverthe- 
less, the nearest approach to a London square that 
is to be found in Philadelphia." 



34 TRAILING MRS. TROLLOPE 

Even after nearly ninety years there is a certain 
pang in learning that while Madam Trollope found 
nothing comely about the exterior of Independence 
Hall, she proclaimed New York's City Hall as 
''noble." 

Trying to imagine that we were Mrs. Trollope, 
we took a stroll up Ninth street in the bright April 
sun. It was chilly and the burly sandwich-man of 
Market street, the long-haired, hatless philosopher 
so well known by sight, was leaning shivering in 
his shirt-sleeves against an arc light standard try- 
ing to wrap his advertising boards around him like 
an overcoat. ''Why don't you walk up and down 
a bit?" we asked him, after he had rebuked the 
thermometer with a robust adjective which would 
have caused Mrs. Trollope to call for hartshorn 
and ammonia. 

"Can't do it," he said. "I've got a bum job 
today. Got to stand on this corner, advertising a 
new drug store; 7:30 to 12:30 and 1:30 to 5:30. 
It's a long day, I'll say so." 

Ninth street above Market is a delightful and 
varied world in itself. At the corner of Filbert we 
found the following chalked on a modest black- 
board : 

Irish Stew 

Pot Roast 

2 Vegatables 

15c 

Within, a number of citizens were taking those 
standing drams Mrs. Trollope deprecated. We 



TRAILING MRS. TROLLOPE 35 

were reminded by these social phenomena that we 
had not lunched. In a neighboring beanery we 
dealt with a dehghtful rhubarb pie, admiring the 
perfection of the waitress's demeanor. Neither too 
condescending nor too friendly, she laid the units 
of our repast upon the marble table with a firm 
clank which seemed to imply that our eating there 
meant nothing to her; j^et she hoped we might 
find nourishment enough not to die on her hands. 
The assorted attractions of North Ninth street 
never fail the affectionate stroller. Novelty shops 
where mysterious electric buzzers vibrate and 
rattle on the plate-glass panes, and safety razors 
reach bottomless prices that would tempt even a 
Russian statesman to unbush. Picture shops, 
where such really delightful sentimental engrav- 
ings as "The End of the Skein" cause soft-hearted 
bystanders to fly home and write to dear old grand 
mother; wine shops where electric bulbs shimmer 
all day long within pyramids of gin bottles. ''Stock 
Up Before July First!" cries the vintner. ''There's 
a Bad Time Coming!" And he adds: 

We know a man who sells a 

quart of water with a little 

cheap whisky in it 

VERY CHEAP 

Morale! 

If you really want a highball 

buy our, etc. 

The animal shops always attract the passers-by. 
One window was crowded with new-hatched 



36 TRAILING MRS. TROLLOPE 

chicks, tender yellow balls of fluff that cause 
grizzled bums to moralize droopingly on the sweet- 
ness of youth and innocence. They (the chicks) 
were swarming around their feeding pans like 
diplomats at the Hotel Crillon in Paris. 

These feeding pans are made like circular mouse- 
traps, with small holes just large enough for the 
chicks to thrust in their heads. One ambitious 
infant, however, a very Trotzky among chicks, 
had got quite inside the pan, and three purple- 
nosed Falstaffs on the pavement were waiting with 
painful agitation to see whether he would emerge 
safely. In a goldfish bowl above, spotted newts 
were swimming, advertised at fifteen cents each as 
desirable 'Sscavengas." Baby turtles the size of a 
dollar piece were crawhng over one another in a 
damp tray. Bright-eyed rabbits twitched their 
small noses along the pane. 

Then came Louis Guanissno, the famous balloon 
man, moving along in a blaze of color, his red and 
blue and yellow balloons tugging and gleaming in 
the sunny air. Louis is a poem to watch, a poly- 
chrome joy to behold. And such graceful suavity ! 
"Here's health and prosperity, and God bless 
you," he says, his kindly rugged face looking down 
at you; ''and when you want any little bal- 
loons" — 

On a sunny afternoon there are sure to be many 
browsers picking over the dusty volumes in the 
pavement boxes of that little bookshop near the 
old archway above filbert street. Down the dark 



TRAILING MRS. TROLLOPE 37 

alley that runs under the archwaj^ horses stand 
munching their nosebags, while a big yellow coal 
wagon, lost in the cul-de-sac, tries desperately to 
turn around. The three big horses clatter and 
crash on the narrow paving. A first edition of 
** Rudder Grange'' for fifteen cents wasn't a bad 
find. (I saw it listed in a recent bookseller's cata- 
logue for $2.50.) By prying up a flyleaf that had 
been pasted down I learned that ''Uncle George" 
had given it to Helen L. Coates for ''Xmas, 
1880." 

Up at the Arch street corner is the famous 
Dumont's Minstrels, once the old Dime Museum, 
where Frank Dumont's picture stands in the lobby 
draped in black. Inside, in the quaint old audi- 
torium, the interlocutor sits on his throne and 
tosses the traditional jest back and forth with the 
end men, Eennie Frankhn and Alf Gibson, clad 
in their glaring scarlet frock-coats. The old quips 
about Camden are still doing brave service. Then 
Eddie Cassady comes on in his cream-colored duds 
and sings a ditty about Ireland and freedom while 
he waves the banner with the harp. Beneath the 
japes on prohibition there is an undertone of pro- 
found sadness. Joe Hamilton sings a song which 
professes to explain that July 1st will be harder 
on the ladies than any one else. ''Good-by, Wild 
Women, Good-by," it is demurely called. Joe 
Hortiz gets "Come Back to the Farm" over the 
footlights, a plaintive tenor appeal, in which the 
church steeple chimes 3 (a. m.) and all the audi- 



S8 TRAILING MRS. TROLLOPE 

ence can hear the cows lowing out in Manayunk 
and Marcus Hook. We are all nigh to tears for 
the little sister gone astray in the bad mad city; 
but here come Burke and Walsh in a merry little 
duo about whistle-wetting. ''We took this coun- 
try from the Indians," sings Burke. ''We'll give 
it back after the 1st of July," repHes Walsh in his 
dulcet barytone. Then, to show they really don't 
care so much, they wind up with a jovial bit of 
dancing. 

Dumont's famous "timely burlesques" still 
keep pace with the humors of the town. The 
"Drug Store Telephone Fight" reduces the audi- 
ence to cheery hysteria. Joe Hamilton or some 
body gets Saint Peter on the wire; the rival dem- 
onstrator gets connected with "the other place." 
The problem is whether the Jazzbo Phone Com- 
pany or its rival can locate the whereabouts of Mr. 
William Goat, who (it appears) is the father of 
the interlocutor, the dignified interlocutor in his 
purple dress suit, who is writhing in embarrassed 
distress on his throne. And then, as we are already 
trespassing on the preserve of the dramatic editor, 
comes what the program calls "intermission of 
several minutes, to enable the ladies to powder 
their noses." 



thp: haver ford comes hoime 39 



THE HAVERFORD COMES HOME 
Philadelphia's hands were tied in the matter of 
welcoming the Haverford. What a greeting we 
could have given her men if they had been per- 
mitted to parade through the center of the citjs 
past Independence Hall — the symbol of all they 
fought for — and down the shining sweep of Broad 
street! And yet, although we were morosely for- 
bidden to ''come in contact with them" (it sounds 
I rather hke the orders given to citizens of Coblenz), 
: what a fine human note there was in the mass of 
I humbler citizens that greeted the transport at the 
I foot of Washington avenue. I wish Mr. Baker 
might have been there — the scene would have made 
I him more tender toward those loyal Philadelphians 
who don't quite see why most of the transports 
should dock at — well, at another Atlantic port! 

But I hadn't intended to go down to see the 
Haverford come in. I have traveled on her myself 
and know her genial habits of procrastination. I 
shrewdly suspected she would arrive at her dock 
long after the hour announced. Days ago, when 
we were told she would arrive on the 27th, I 
smiled knowingly. When she was off the Capes 
and word was telegraphed of a "disabled steering 
gear," I chuckled. The jovial old ship was her- 
self again! It is almost incredible that an enemy 
submarine should have dared to fire a tin fish at 
her. I should think a cautious, subaqueous com- 



40 THE HAVERFORD COMES HOME 

mander would have sheered off and dived away 
in panic, fearing some devil's ruse. Surely no 
harmless vessel (he ought to have gutturaled to 
himself) would travel as leisurely as that! How 
many U-boat captains must have fled her dignified 
presence, suspecting her to be one of Beatty's trick 
fleet, sent out to lure innocent submarines to 
death by loitering blandly on the purple sea. This 
is no ill-natured jibe. Slow ships are ever the best 
to travel on. Her unruffled, imperceptible pro- 
gress across blue horizons is her greatest charm, 
and was undoubtedly her subtle security. 

But passing along Pine street, about thirty to- 
bacco whiffs after breakfast, I saw three maidens 
run out from the Peirce School in a high cackle of 
feminine excitement. Evidently they had been 
let off for the day. ''What shall we do with these 
old books?" I heard one say. ''Do we have to 
cart them round with us?" It was plain from 
their gleeful chatter that they were bound for 
Washington avenue. And then on Broad street I 
saw little groups of pedestrians hurrying south- 
ward. Over that spacious thoroughfare there was 
a feeling of suspense and excitement — the feeling 
of "something happening" that passes so quickly 
from brain to brain. I could not resist temptation 
to go down and join the throng. 

Washington avenue is not a boulevard of pleas- 
ure. Most of it is a dreary expanse of huge fac- 
tories and freight cars. But over the cobbles citi- 
zens of all sorts were hurrying with bright faces. 



THE HAVERFORD COMES HOME 41 

Peddlers carried bundles of flags and knots of 
colored balloons, which tugged and eddied in the 
cold wind. In an Italian drug store at the corner 
of Sixth, under a sign, Telefono PubbHco per 
Qualsiasi Distanza, a distracted pretzel basket 
man, who had already sold out his wares, was 
calling up some distant base of suppHes in the hope 
of replenishing his stock. Jefferson Square, brown 
and leafless, was packed with people. Down by 
the docks loomed up a tall, black funnel, dribbling 
smoke. ''There she is!" cried an excited lady, 
leaping from cobble to cobble. For a moment I 
almost apologized to the good old Haverford for 
having misjudged her. Was she really docked al- 
ready, on the tick of time? Then I saw that the 
ivessel in sight had only two masts, and I knew 
[that my old favorite had four. 

The crowd at the lower end of Washington 
avenue was immense, held firmly in check by 
mounted police. Red Cross ambulances and 
trucks were slowly butting their way down to the 
pier, envied by us humbler souls who had no way 
of getting closer. Perched on a tall wagon a group 
of girls, apparently factory hands, were singing 
merrily ''Bring Back My Bonnie to Me." On 
every side I heard scraps of detached conversation. 
"He was wounded and gassed, and he says 'if they 
send me back to that stuff it'll be in a box.' " 
sheltering behind a stout telephone pole, perhaps 
the very one which was flinging the peddler's an- 
guished cry for more pretzels, I sought a light for 



42 THE HAVERFORD COMES HOME 

my pipe and found myself gazing on a red-printed 
dodger: ''WORKING CLASS, KNOW THE 
TRUTH. The workers of Russia have done away 
with the capitahstic, distroctive, parasitic sistem, 
which on one hand creates Milhonaires and luxury 
and on the other hobos and misery." 

The longest way round is usually the shortest 
way home, and it occurred to me that the grave- 
yard of Old Swedes Church would be a useful 
vantage point. I found my way there down the 
quaint httle vista of League street and the oddly 
named channel of Reckless street. Apparently the 
same thought had occurred to several other wise- 
acres, for I got to the gates just as the sexton was 
locking them. Ignoring the generous offer that 
the church makes on several signboards — "$10 
Reward for Any Person Found Destroying the 
Church Property" — I took my stand at one corner 
of the churchyard, looking out over the docks and 
the thousands crowded along the pavements be- 
low. Reading the tombstones passed away the 
time for the better part of an hour. 

One sad little inscription runs like this: 

LIZZIE 

affectionate daughter of 

died Dec. 24, 1857 

When Christmas bells ring out their chime 
And holly boughs and sprigs of thyme 

Were hung on many a wall. 
Our LIZZIE in her beauty's prime 

Lay in our darkened hall. 



THE HAVERFORD COMES HOME 48 

Escaping the chilly wind that blew up from the 
river I spent some time studying the interior of the 
lovely little church and reading the epitaphs of the 
old Swedish pastors. Of Olaf Parlin, one of these, 
it is nobly written '^A.nd in the Last Combat, 
strengthened by Heavenly Succours, he Quit the 
Field not Captive but Conqueror." 

But still there was no sign of the Haverford. I 
strolled up the waterfront, stopping by the barge 
Victor to admire a very fat terrier fondled by the 
skipper's wife. I was about to ask if I could step 
aboard, thinking that the deck of the barge would 
afford a rather better view of the hoped-for trans- 
port, when I saw the ferry Peerless, one of the 
three ancient oddities that ply between South 
street and Gloucester. And at the same moment 
the whistles down the river began to blow a deep, 
vibrant chorus. Obviously, the best way to see 
the Haverford was to take a deep sea voyage to 
Gloucester. 

And so it was. When the Peerless pulled away 
from her slip the first thing we saw was the recep- 
tion boat City of Camden, with the Mayor's com- 
mittee aboard, backing up-stream in a flutter of 
flags. And then we came right abreast of the big 
liner, which had just come opposite her pier. 
She stood very high in the water, and seems none 
the worse for the five months' ducking she is said 
to have had. Her upper decks were brown with 
men, all facing away from us, however, to acknowl- 
edge the roar of cheering from the piers. So they 



44 THE HAVERFORD COMES HOME 

did not hear the feeble piping set up by the few 
intrepid travelers to Gloucester. A spinster next 
to me cried out entranced: ^'Oh, I would like to 
take each of those boys and hug them." 

A ship is always a noble sight, and while the 
Haverford was never built for beauty, she has the 
serene dignity of one who has gone about many 
hard tasks in her own uncomplaining fashion. 
She has a large and solid stateliness. Hurricanes 
cannot hustle her, nor have all the hosts of Tirpitz 
marred her sturdy comehhood. Her funnel is too 
outrageously tall and lean, her bows too bluff, her 
beam too broad for her to take on any of the 
queenly grace of her slim and swagger sisters. She 
is a square-toed, useful kind of creature; just the 
sort of vessel the staid Delaware loves, with no 
swank or swagger. And yet, in the clear yellow 
light of the winter morning, she seemed to have a 
new and very lovely beauty. Her masts were 
dressed with flags, from the bright ripple of the 
Stars and Stripes at the fore to the deep scarlet of 
her own Red Ensign over the taffrail. Half a 
dozen tugs churned and kicked beside her as she 
swung slowly to the dock. Over the water came 
a continuous roar of cheering as the waiting thou- 
sands tried to say what was in their hearts. In 
the crude language of the Board of Health, her 
passengers had not been ''disinfected" and we 
were not to be allowed ''contact" with them; but 
they had traveled far and dared much; they had 
gone out hoping no gain; they had come back 



MAROONED IN PHILADELPHIA 45 

asking no glory. From the low deck of the Peer- 
hss we could see them waving their brown caps 
against the bright blue nothingness of the skyline. 
They were home again, and we were glad. 



MAROONED IN PHILADELPHIA 

If A Philadelphian of a hundred years ago could 
walk along our streets at night, undoubtedly the 
first thing that would startle him would be the 
amazing dazzle of light that floods from all the 
shop windows. Particularly during the few weeks 
directly preceding Christmas city streets at night 
present a panorama that would cure the worst fit 
of the blues. What a glowing pageant they are, 
blazing with radiance and color! Here and there 
you will find a display ornamented with Christmas 
trees and small red, blue and green electric bulbs. 
Perhaps there will be a toy electric train running 
merrily all night long on a figure-eight-shaped 
track, passing through imitation tunnels and 
ravines with green artificial moss cunningly glued 
to them; over ravishing switches and grade cross- 
ings, past imposing stations and little signal tow- 
ers. Perhaps you may be lured by the shimmer of 
a jeweler's window, set with rows and rows of gold 
watches on a slanting plush or satin background. 
There, if you are a patient observer, you will 
usually find one of the ultra-magnificent time- 
pieces that have an old-fashioned railroad train 



46 MAROONED IN PHILADELPHIA 

engraved on the case. We have always admired 
these hugely, but never felt any overwhelming 
desire to own one. They are sold for $14.95, being 
worth $150. 

Sometimes even the most domestic man is ma- 
rooned in town for the evening. It is always, after 
the first pang of homesickness is over, an enlarging 
experience. Instead of the usual rush for train or 
trolley he loiters after leaving the office, strolling 
leisurely along the pavements and enjoying the 
clear blue chill of the dusk. Perhaps the pallid 
radiance of a barber's shop, with its white bowls of 
light, lures him in for a shave, and he meditates on 
the impossibility of avoiding the talcum powder 
that barbers conceal in the folds of a towel and 
suddenly clap on his razed face before they let him 
go. It avails not to tell a barber ''No powder!" 
They put it on automatically. We know one man 
who thinks that heaven will be a place where one 
may lie back in a barber's chair and have endless 
hot towels applied to a fresh-shaved face. It is an 
attractive thought. 

But the most delightful haunt of man, about 
7 o'clock of a winter evening, is the popular lunch 
room. This admirable institution has been 
hymned often and eloquently, but it can never be 
sufficiently praised. To sit at one of those white- 
topped tables looking over the evening paper (and 
now that the big silver-plated sugar bowls have 
come back again there is once more something 
large enough on the table to prop the newspaper 



INTAROONED IN PHILADELPHIA 47 

against) and consume sausages and griddle cakes 
and hot mince pie and revel in the warm human 
glitter round about, is as near a modest 100 per 
cent of interesting satisfaction as anything we 
know. Joyce Kilmer, a very human poet and a 
very stout eater, used to believe that abundant 
meals were a satisfactory substitute for sleep. For 
our own part, we are always ready to postpone bed 
if there is any prospect of something to eat. But 
we do not like to elaborate this subject any fur- 
ther, for it makes us hungry to do so, and we dare 
not leave the typewriter just yet. 

Our marooned business man, after a stroll along 
the streets and a meal at the lunch room, may very 
likely drop in at the movies. Most of us nowadays 
worship now and then at this shrine of Professor 
Muybridge. The pubhc is long suffering, and 
seems fairly well pleased at almost anything that 
appears on the screen. But the extraordinary 
thing at a movie is hardly ever what is on the 
screen, but rather the audience itself. Observe the 
mute, expectant, almost reverent attention. The 
darkened house crowded with people prayerfully^ 
and humbly anxious to be amused or thrilled! One 
wonders what their evenings must have been like 
when there were no movies if their present reaction 
is so passionately devout. A movie audience is a 
more moving spectacle than any of the flashing 
shadows that beam before it. If all this mar- 
velous attention-energy, gathered every evening 
in every city in the land, could be focussed for a 



48 MAROONED IN PHILADELPHIA 

few moments on some of the urgent matters that 
concern the world now — say the League of Nations 
— it would be a wonderful aid to good citizenship. 
The movies are bhndly groping their way, by 
means of current-event films, war films and the 
like, toward an era in which they will play a lead- 
ing and indispensable part in education and civic 
life. 

It should be a function of every large city gov- 
ernment to provide '' municipal movies," by which 
we mean not free motion-picture shows, but reels 
of film distributed free among all the motion-pic- 
ture theatres in the city, exhibiting various phases 
of municipal activity and illustrating by sugges- 
tion how citizens may co-operate to increase the 
welfare of the community. We hear a good deal 
about street-cleaning evils, about rapid-transit 
problems, about traffic congestion, about the evils 
of public spitting, the danger of one-way streets 
and a score of other matters. All these could be 
interestingly illuminated on the screen, with seri- 
ous intent, and yet with the racy human touch 
that always enlivens the common affairs of men. 
And when some discussion arises that concerns us 
all, such as the character of the proposed war 
memorial, various types of memorials could be 
illustrated in films to stimulate public suggestion 
as to what is most fitting for our environment. 
None of us know our own city as well as we would 
like to. Let the city government, through some 
film bureau, show us our own citizens at work and 



MAROONED IN PHILADELPHIA 49 

play and so quicken our curiosity and civic pride 
or shame, as the case may be. 

Another pubHc clubhouse which the marooned 
business man finds delightful and always full of 
good company is the railroad terminal. A big rail- 
road station is an unfaihng source of amusement 
and interest. From news-stand to lunch counter, 
from baggage room to train gate, it is rich in char- 
acter study and the humors of humanity in flux. 
People are rarely at their best when hurried or 
worried, and many of those one meets at the 
terminal are in those moods. But, for any rational 
student of human affairs, it is as well to ponder our 
vices as well as our virtues, and the statistician 
might tabulate valuable data as to the number of 
tempers lost on the railway station stairs daily or 
the number of cross words uttered where com- 
muters stand in line to buy their monthly tickets. 
The influence of the weather, the time of year and 
the time of day would bring interesting factors to 
bear upon these figures. 

There is just one more pastime that the casta- 
way of our imagination finds amusing, and that is 
acting as door-opener for innumerable cats that 
sit unhappily at the front doors of little shops on 
cold evenings. They have been shut out by chance 
and sit waiting in patient sadness on the cold sill 
until the door may chance to open. To open the 
door for them and watch them run inside, with 
tail erect and delighted gesture, is a real pleasure. 
With a somewhat similar pleasure does the ma- 



50 THE RONALDSON CEMETERY 

rooned wanderer ultimately reach his own front 
door and rededicate himself to the delights of 
home. 



THE RONALDSON CEMETERY 

Whenever I feel weary of life, liberty and the 
pursuit of some one else's happiness, whenever 
some one tells me that the League of Nations is 
sure to be a failure, or reminds me that the Ameri- 
can Press Humorists are going to hold their con- 
vention here next June and we shall all have to 
flog our lethargic brains into competition with all 
the twenty-one-karat drolls of this hemisphere — 
whenever, in short, life is wholly gray and obhque, 
I resort to Veranda's for lunch. 

Veranda's, of course, is not its name; nor shall 
I tell you where it is. Eighteen months of faithful 
lunching and, perhaps, half a ton of spaghetti con- 
sumed, have given me a certain prestige in the 
bright eyes of Rosa, the demurest and most inno- 
cently charming waitress in Philadelphia. I do 
not wish to send competitors in her regard flocking 
to that quiet little Italian restaurant, where the 
table cloths are so white, the coffee so fragrant and 
where the liver and kidneys come to the board 
swimming in a rich brc n gravy the reality of 
which no words can approach. And that Italian 
bread, so crisply crusted, so soft and absorbent 
within ! A slab of Veranda's bread dipped in that 



^' 



i 



¥- 



THE RONALDSON CEMETERY dl 

kidney gravy atones for three speeches by Senator 
Sherman ! And then when Rosa brings on the tall 
pot of marmalade, which another devotee and I 
keep there for dessert, and we light up our ciga- 
rettes and watch the restaurant cat sprawling in 
Oriental luxury by the steam pipes — then we come 
somewhere near the throne of human feUcity men- 
tioned by Doctor Johnson. 

Veranda's is an outpost of Little Italy, which 
does not really begin until you get south of Lom- 
bard. And the other day, after lowering the level 
of the marmalade by several inches, it occurred to 
me to renew my acquaintance with Little Italy 
proper. 

Ninth street is the best channel of approach to 
Philadelphia's Mediterranean colony. There is a 
good deal to distract attention before you cross the 
Alps of South street. If you have a taste for alleys 
you will be likely to take a side tour of a few versts 
in the quaint section of stables and little brick 
houses that lies just below Locust street and be- 
tween Ninth and Tenth. Just now you will find 
that region liberally placarded with small neat 
notices announcing the loss (on January 8) of a 
large yellow and white Angora cat, having white 
face, breast and feet and answering to the name of 
Taffy. This struck at my heart, for I once owned 
a yellow Angora of the same name, which I 
smuggled home from Boston one Christmas Eve 
in a Pullman sleeper, against all railway rules, and 
I hope and trust that by this time Taffy has re- 



52 THE RONALDSQN CEMETERY 

turned to his home at 260 South Ninth street, and 
to Mrs. Walter M. James, his bereaved mistress. 

The little notice about the recreant Master 
Taffy was strangely appropriate for this queer 
little district of Hutchinson, Delhi, Irving and 
Manning streets, for it is just what in London 
would be known as a ''mews." It is a strange 
huddle of old brick houses, full of stables and car- 
penters' workshops, with agreeable vistas of 
chimneys, attic windows, and every now and then 
a gentleman of color leisurely bestraddling a horse 
and clumping along the quiet pavements. Small 
brown dogs of miscellaneous heritage sit sunning 
themselves on doorsteps; on Hutchinson street a 
large cart was receiving steaming forkloads of 
stable straw. In the leisurely brightness of mid- 
afternoon, with occasional old clo' men chanting 
their litany down the devious alleyways, it seems 
almost village-hke in its repose. A great place to 
lead a fat detective a chase ! The next time George 
Gibbs or John Mclntyre writes a tale of mystery 
and sleuthing, I hope he will use the local color 
of Delhi street. Why do our native authors love 
to lay the scenes of their yarns in Venice, Madrid, 
Brooklyn or almost anywhere except Philadelphia? 

On Ninth street below Pine one comes upon a 
poem in a window which interested me because the 
author, Mr. Otis Gans Fletcher, has evidently had 
difficulty with those baffling words ''Ye" and 
"Thou," which have puzzled even greater poets — 



THE RONALDSON CEMETERY 53 

such as Don Marquis. The poem is called ** Wel- 
come to Our Heroes/' and begins: 

Welcome! home, Great Heroes, 
Nobly! hath thou fought 

and continues, 

We know the price, the sacrifice 
That ye each paid to learn, 

and by and by concludes: 

Welcome! thrice!!! welcome, Great Heroes, 

Defenders of Humanity; 
The world now lives, on what thou didst give, 

For the great spirit, De-moc-ra-cy. 

After putting Lombard street behind the 
voyager becomes immediately aware of the Italian 
atmosphere. Brightly colored cans of olive oil 
wanton in the windows; the Tripoli Barber Supply 
Company, whose window shines with all manner 
of lotions and shampoos, offers the Vesuvius Qui- 
nine Tonic, which is said to supply ''unrivaled 
neutrement " for the hair. Little shops appear dis- 
playing that curious kind of painting which seems 
to be executed on some metallic surface and is 
made more vivid by the insertion of small wafers 
of mother-of-pearl where the artist wants to throw 
in a note of high emotion. These paintings gen- 
erally portray Gothic chapels brooding by lakes of 
ultramarine splendor; their only popular com- 
petitor is a scene of a white terrier with an expres- 
sion of fixed nobility watching over the bedside of a 



54 THE RONALDSON CEMETERY 

young female innocent who lies, clad in a blue 
dress, beneath a scarlet coverlet, her golden locks 
spread over a white pillow. The faithfulness of the 
animal and the secure repose of the child may be 
profitably studied in the length of time necessary 
to light a pipe. I feel sure that no kind-hearted 
footpad's home is complete without this picture. 
The Ronaldson Cemetery, laid out in 1827 at 
Ninth and Bainbridge streets, comes as a distinct 
shock to a sentimental wayfarer already un- 
manned by the above appeal to the emotions. 
Mrs. Meredith, the kindly caretaker, admitted 
me through the massive iron gates, surprised and 
pleased to find a devotee of cemeteries. In the 
damp chill of a February afternoon the old grave- 
yard is not the cheeriest of spots, but I was re- 
stored to optimism by this inscription: 

Passing stranger think this not 

A place of fear and gloom : 
We love to linger near this spot, 

It is our parents' tomb. 

This, however, was carved some fifty years ago. 
I fear there is little lingering done in Ronaldson's 
Cemetery nowadays, for the stones are in ill re- 
pair, many of them ftillen. According to Scharf 
and Westcott's history, it was once considered the 
finest cemetery in the country and "a popular place 
of burial." Just within the gateway are two little 
houses, in at least one of which a merry Uttle 
family of children is growing up undepressed by 



THE RONALDSON CEMETERY 55 

the strange surroundings. One of these houses, 
according to Ronaldson's cautious plan, was ''to 
have a room provided with a stove, couch, etc., 
into which persons dying suddenly might be laid 
and the string of a bell put into their hand, so that 
if there should be any motion of returning Hfe the 
alarm bell might be rung, the keeper roused and 
medical help procured." 

James Ronaldson was a Scotchman, as I had 
already/ surmised from an obelisk erected, ''Sacred 
to the memory of Scottish Strangers," and pos- 
sibly his cautiousness in the matter of burying 
people alive may have suggested this favorite 
theme to Edgar Allan Poe, who was living in 
Philadelphia at the time when the magnificent 
new cemetery must have been the talk of the 
town. Scotchmen have always been interested in 
cemeteries, and as I walked those desolate paths 
among the graves I could not help thinking of 
Stevenson's love of the old Grayfriars and Calton 
Hill burying grounds in Edinburgh. A man was 
busy digging a grave near the front gate, and a 
new oak casket lay at the door of the keeper's 
house. It was strange to see the children playing 
round happily in such scenes. 



56 WILLOW GROVE 



WILLOW GROVE 

Speaking as a foreigner — every man is a foreigner 
in Philadelphia until he has lived here for three 
generations — I should say that no place is more 
typical of the Philadelphia capacity for enjoying 
itself in a thoroughly genteel and innocent way 
than Willow Grove. Cynics have ascribed the 
placid conduct of Willow Grove's merrymakers to 
the fact that eighty minutes or so standing up in a 
crowded trolley blunt human capacity for aban- 
donment and furious mirth. Physiologists say 
that the unprecedented quantity of root beer and 
hard-boiled eggs consumed at the Grove account 
for the staid bearing of the celebrants. Be that 
how it may, Willow Grove has the genial and 
placid flavor of a French amusement park. Con- 
trary to popular theory the French, like ourselves, 
are comely behaved on an outing. People to whom 
enjoyment is a habit do not turn their picnics into 
an orgy. 

It takes practically as long to get to Willow 
Grove as it does to Atlantic City, but the sunburn 
does not keep one awake all night and asleep at 
the ofhce the next day. That roUing watershed 
where the creeks run alternately into the Delaware 
and the Schuylkill is well hilled, watered and aired. 
There is no surf, it is true; but a superb panorama 
of the white combers of the sky, the clouds. And 
fields of plumed and tasseled corn, flickering in: 



WILLOW GROVE 57 

the wind, are no mean substitute for sand beaches. 
Let us be practical; no one can eat the surf ! And 
the most important matter in a picnic is to have 
plenty of food. 

Let me state, in passing, that the ideal picnic 
lunch is always packed in a shoebox; there should 
be included an opener for root-beer bottles, and 
doughnuts calculated on a basis of three for each 
adult. Inside the ring of each doughnut should 
be packed a hard-boiled egg. Each party should 
include one person (preferably an aunt) of prudent 
instincts, to whom may be entrusted the money 
for return carfares, Ada's knitting bag, Ada's 
young man's wrist watch and registration card in 
draft Class 4A, father's spare cigar for the home 
voyage, grandmother's pneumatic cushion and 
Cousin Janet's powder-papers and copy of Spumy 
Stories. This prudent person will form a head- 
quarters and great general staff, a strong defensive 
position upon which the maneuvers of the excur- 
sion will be based. 

The first thing that always strikes me at Willow 
Grove is how amazingly well dressed everybody is. 
The frocks, hats and ankles of the j^oung ladies 
are a vision of rapture. The young men, too, are 
well dressed, in the best possible style, which is, of 
course, the uniform of Uncle Sam. The last time 
I was there it was a special celebration day for the 
marines. Several hundred of them were loping 
about in their cafe-au-lait khaki, fine, tall, lean 
chaps, with that curious tautness of the trousers 



58 WILLOW GROVE 

that makes the devil dogs look stiff-kneed. 
Bronzed, handsome fellows, with the characteristic 
tilt of the Stetson that must flutter the hearts of 
French flappers. And as for the girls, if Willow 
Grove on a Saturday afternoon is a fair cross- 
section of Philadelphia pulchritude, I will match it 
against anything any other city can show. 

Willow Grove, of course, is famous for its music, 
and at dusk the Marine Band was to play in the 
pavilion. That open-air auditorium, under the 
tremulous ceiling of tall maples and willows and 
sycamores, with the green and silver shimmer 
of the darkening lake at one side, is a cheerful 
place to sit and meditate. I had a volume of 
Thoreau with me, and began to read it, but he 
kept on harping upon the blisses of solitude which 
annoyed me when I was enjoying the mirths and 
moods of the crowd. Nowhere will you find a 
happier, more sane and contented and typicall}^ 
American crowd than at Willow Grove. Perhaps 
in wartime we take our pleasures a little more 
soberly than of old. Yet there seemed no shadow 
of sadness or misgiving on all those happy faces, 
and it was a good sight to see tall marines romping 
through the ''Crazy Village" arm in arm with 
bright-eyed girls. Those boys in the coffee-and- 
milk uniform will see crazier villages than that in 
Champagne and Picardy. 

The last arrows of sunlight were still quivering 
among the upmost leaves when the Marine Band 
began to play, and the great crowd gathered under 



WILLOW GROVE 59 

the trees was generous with affectionate enthu- 
siasm. And then, at a bugle call, the rest of the 
sea-soldiers charged shouting down the dusky 
aisles, climbed the platform, and sang their war 
songs with fine pride and spirit. ''America, Here's 
My Boy " ; " It's a Long, Long Way to Berlin, But 
We'll Get there, by Heck"; "Goodby, Broadv/ay: 
Hello, France" and "There's a Long, Long, Trail" 
were the favorites. And then came the one song 
that of all others has permeated American fiber 
during the last year — "Over There." There is 
something of simple gallantry and pathos in it that 
I find genuinely moving. The clear, merry, auda- 
cious male voices made me think of their brothers 
in France who were, even at that very moment, 
undergoing such fiery and unspeakable trial. The 
great gathering under the trees seemed to feel 
something of this, too; there was a caught breath 
and a quiver of secret pain on every bench. " Over 
There," unassuming ditty as it is, has caught the 
spirit of our crusade with inspiration and truth. 
It is the informal anthem of our great and dedi- 
cated resolve. 

As we walked back toward the station the roll- 
ing loops and webbed framework of the scenic 
railway were silhouetted black against a western 
sky which was peacock blue with a quiver of green- 
ish crystal still eddying in it. The bullfrogs were 
drumming in the little ponds enameled with green 
scum. And from the train window, as we rattled 
down that airy valley, we could see the Grove's 

5 



60 CHESTNUT ST. FROM A FIRE ESCAPE 

spangles and festoons of light. Philadelphia may 
take her amusements placidly, but she knows how 
to enjoy them. 



CHESTNUT STREET FROM A FIRE 
ESCAPE 

Just outside our office window is a fire-escape 
with a little iron balcony. On warm days, when 
the tall windows are wide open, that rather slender 
platform is our favorite vantage ground for watch- 
ing Chestnut street. We have often thought how 
pleasant it would be to have a pallet spread out 
there, so that we could do our work in that reclin- 
ing posture that is so inspiring. 

But we can tell a good deal of what is going on 
along Chestnut street without leaving our desk. 
Chestnut street sings a music of its own. Its 
genial human symphony could never be mistaken 
for that of any other highway. The various 
strands of sound that compose its harmony grad- 
ually sink into our mind without our paying con- 
scious heed to them. For instance, there is the 
light sliding swish of the trolley poles along the 
wire, accompanied by the deep rocking rumble of 
the car, and the crash as it pounds over the cross- 
tracks at Sixth street. There is the clear mellow 
clang of the trolley gongs, the musical trill of fast 
wagon wheels running along the trolley rails, and 
the rattle of hoofs on the cobbled strip between 
the metals. Particularly easy to identify is the 



CHESTNUT ST. FROM A FIRE ESCAPE 61 

sound every citizen knows, the rasping, sliding 
clatter of a wagon turning off the car track so that 
a trolley can pass it. The front wheels have left 
the track, but the back pair are scraping along 
against the setts before mounting over the rim. 

Every street has its own distinctive noises and 
the attentive ear accustoms itself to them until 
they become almost a part of the day's enjoy- 
ment. The deep-toned bell of Independence Hall 
bronzing the hours is part of our harmony here, 
and no less familiar is the vigorous tap-tap of 
Blind Al's stick. Al is the well-known news- 
dealer at the corner of Chestnut and Fifth. Sev- 
eral times a day he passes along under our win- 
dows, and the tinkle of his staff is a well-known 
and pleasant note in our ears. We like to imagine, 
too, that we can recognize the peculiarly soft and 
easy-going rumble of a wagon of watermelons. 

But what we started to talk about was the bal- 
cony, from which we can get a long view of Chest- 
nut street all the way from Broad street almost to 
the river. It is a pleasant prospect. There is 
something very individual about Chestnut street. 
It could not possibly be in New York. The solid, 
placid dignity of most of the buildings, the absence 
of skyscrapers, the plain stone fronts with the 
arched windows of the sixties, all these bespeak 
a city where it is still a little bit bad form for a 
building to be too garishly new. I may be wrong, 
but I do not remember in New York any such 
criss-cross of wires above the streets. Along Chest- 



62 CHESTNUT ST. FROM A FIRE ESCAPE 

nut street they run at will from roof to roof over 
the way. 

Gazing from our little balcony the eye travels 
down along the uneven profile of the northern 
flank of Chestnut street. From the Wanamaker 
wireless past the pale, graceful minaret of the 
Federal Reserve Bank, the skyline drops down to 
the Federal Building which, standing back from 
the street, leaves a gap in the view. Then the 
slant of roofs draws the eye upward again, over 
the cluster of Httle conical spires on Green's Hotel 
(like a French chateau) to the sharp ridges and 
heavy pyramid roof of the Merchants' Union 
Trust Company. This, with its two attendant 
banks on either side, is undoubtedly the most ex- 
traordinary architectural curiosity Chestnut street 
can boast. The fagade with. its appalling quirks 
and twists of stone and iron grillwork, its sculp- 
tured Huns and Medusa faces, is something to con- 
template with alarm. 

After reaching Seventh street, Chestnut be- 
comes less adventurous. Perhaps awed by the 
simple and stately beauty of Independence Hall 
and its neighbors, it restrains itself from any fur- 
ther originality until Fourth street, where the or- 
nate Gothic of the Provident claims the eye. From 
our balcony we can see only a part of Independ- 
ence Hall, but we look down on the faded elms 
along the pavement in front and the long line of 
iron posts beloved of small boys for leapfrog. Then 
the eye climbs to the tall and graceful staff above 



CHESTNUT ST. FROM A FIRE ESCAPE 63 

the Drexel Building, where the flag ripples cleanly 
against the blue. And our view is bounded, far 
away to the east, by the massive tower of the 
Victor factory in Camden. 

It is great fun to watch Chestnut street from the 
little balcony. On hot days, when the white sun- 
light fills the street with a dazzle of brightness and 
bands of dark shadow, it is amusing to see how all 
pedestrians keep to the shady southern pavements. 
When a driving shower comes up and the slants 
and rods of rain lash against the dingy brownstone 
fronts, one may look out and see passers by hud- 
dled under the awnings and the mounted police- 
men's horses sleek as satin in the wet. The pave- 
ment under our balcony is notable for its slipperi- 
ness : it has been chipped into ribs by stonemasons 
to make it less so. In the rain it shines like a 
mirror. And our corner has its excitements, too. 
Once every few months the gas mains take it into 
their pipes to explode and toss manholes and pav- 
ing sixty feet in air. 

The part of Chestnut street that is surveyed by 
our balcony is a delightful highway: friendly, 
pleasantly dignified, with just a touch of old- 
fashioned manners and homeliness. It is rather 
akin to a London street. And best of all, almost 
underneath our balcony is a little lunch room where 
you can get custard ice cream with honey poured 
over it, and we think it is the best thing in the 
world. 



64 THE PARKWAY AND BILLY 



THE PARKWAY, HENRY FORD AND 
BILLY THE BEAN MAN 

I WALKED down the Parkway yesterday morning 
visualizing that splendid emptiness of sunshine as 
it will appear five or ten years hence, lined with art 
galleries, museums and libraries, shaded with 
growing trees, leading from the majestic pinnacle 
of the City Hall to the finest public estate in 
America. It is a long way from those open fields 
of splintered brick and gravel pits, where work- 
men are now warming their hands over bonfires, 
to the Peace Conference in Paris. But the hope 
occurred to me that the League of Nations will not 
tie itself down too closely to the spot where its 
archives are kept. It will be a fine thing if the 
annual meetings of the League can be held in dif- 
ferent cities all over the world, visiting the nations 
in turn. This process would do much to educate 
public sentiment to the reality and importance of 
our new international commission. And in the 
course of time it is to be supposed that the league 
might meet in Philadelphia, where, in a sense, it 
was founded. The world is rich in lovely cities — 
Rio, Athens, Edinburgh, Rome, Tokio and the 
rest. But the Philadelphia of the future, as some 
citizens have dreamed it, will be able to hold up 
its head with the greatest. I like to think of a 
Philadelphia in which the lower Schuylkill would 



THE PARKWAY AND BILLY 65 

be something more than a canal of oily ooze; in 
which the wonderful Dutch meadows of the Neck 
would be reclaimed into one of the world's loveliest 
riverside parks, and in which the Parkway will 
stretch its airy vista from the heart of the city, 
between stately buildings of public profit, out to 
the sparkling waters of Fairmount. 

The city shows a curiously assorted silhouette as 
one walks down the Parkway from Twenty-fifth 
street. There is the plain dark dome of the 
Cathedral, with its golden cross flashing in the 
sun and the tall cocoa-colored pillars. No one 
would guess from the drab exterior the splendor 
of color and fragrance within. There is, of course, 
the outline of William Penn on his windy vantage, 
the long, dingy line of Broad Street Station's train- 
shed and the tall but unpretentious building of the 
Bell Telephone Company, where the flag swims 
against the sky on its slender staff. As one walks 
on, past the Medico-Chirurgical Hospital, with its 
memorable inscription {Think not the beautiful do- 
ings of thy soul shall perish unremembered; they 
abide with thee forever) , the thin white spire of the 
Arch Street Methodist Episcopal Church and 
the monstrous oddity of the Masonic Temple 
spring into view. In an optimistic mood, under a 
riot of sunlight and a radiant sky, one is tempted 
to claim a certain beauty for this incongruous 
panorama. Yet if there is beauty no one can claim 
a premeditated scheme for it. Granite, marble, 
brick and chocolate stone jostle one another. Let 



66 THE PARKWAY AND BILLY 

us hope that the excellent ruthlessness with which 
the paths of the Parkway have been made straight 
will be equaled by diligent harmony in the new 
structures to come. 

The great churches of the Roman communion 
are always an inspiration to visit. At almost all 
hours of the day or night you will find worshipers 
slipping quietly in and out, generally of the hum- 
blest classes. I slipped into the Cathedral for a 
few minutes and sat there watching the shimmer 
of color and blended shadows as the vivid sun- 
light streamed through the semicircular windows 
above the nave. The body of the church is steeped 
in that soft dusk described once for all as ''a dim 
religious hght," but the great cream-colored pillars 
with their heavj^ gold ornaments lift the eyes up- 
ward to the arched ceiling with its small tablets 
of blue and shining knots of gold. In the dome 
hung a faint lilac haze of intermingled gentle hues, 
sifting through the ring of stained windows. The 
eastern window over the high altar shows one 
brilhant note of rich blue in the folds of the 
Madonna's gown. Over the gleaming terrace of 
white marble steps hangs a great golden lamp with 
a small ruby spark glowing through the twilight. 
Below these steps a plainly dressed little man 
knelt in prayer all the time I was in the church. 
The air was faintly fragrant with incense, having 
almost the aroma of burning cedar wood. A con- 
stant patter of hushed footfalls on the marble floor 
was due to the entrance and exit of stealthy wor- 



THE PARKWAY AND BILLY 67 

shipers coming in for a few minutes of silence in the 
noon recess. 

Just around the corner from the Cathedral one 
looks across the broad playground of the Friends' 
Select School on to the bright, cheerful face of 
Race street. In that 1600 block Race is a typical 
Philadelphia street of the old sort — plain brick 
houses with slanted roofs and dormer windows, 
white and green shutters and scoured marble steps. 
I was surprised to notice the number of signs dis- 
played calling attention to '' Apartments," ''Va- 
cancies" and ''Furnished Rooms." Certainly I 
can imagine no pleasanter place to lodge, with the 
sunny windows looking over the school ground to 
the soaring figure of Penn and the high chffs be- 
hind him. Romance seems to linger along that 
sun-warmed brick pavement, and I peered curi- 
ously at the windows so discreetly curtained with 
lace and muslin, wondering what quaint tales the 
landladies of Race street might have to impart if 
one could muster up courage enough to question 
them. In the news stand and cigar store at the 
corner of Sixteenth I made a notable discovery — a 
copy of Henry Ford's new Sunday school paper, 
the Dearborn Independent — the Ford Inter- 
national Weekly, he proudly subtitles it. I bought 
a copy and took it to lunch with me. I cannot say 
it left me much richer; nor, I fear, will it leave 
Henry that way. Much can be forgiven Henry for 
the honest simplicity of his soul, but the lad who's 
palming off those editorial page mottoes on him, 



68 THE PARKWAY AND BILLY 

in black-face type, ought to face a firing squad. 
This is the way they run: 

** Where buy we sleep?" inquired the royal shirk; 
The sweetest rest on earth is bought with work. 

And this : 

The truth of equal opportunity is this: 

Life, death; love, hope and strife, no man may miss. 

Or again: 

When profit is won at the cost of a principle, 
The winner has lost — this law is invincible. 

Henry, Henry — didn't that cruise on the Oskar 
teach you anything? It seems too bad that Henry 
should go to the expense of founding a new 
humorous journal when Life is doing so well. 

Coming back along Arch street I fell in with 
Billy the Bean Man. You may have seen Billy sell- 
ing necklaces of white and scarlet beans on Broad 
street, clad in his well-known sombrero, magenta 
shirt and canvas trousers. Billy is a first-class med- 
icine man, and he hits this town about once a year. 
He wore the cleanest shave I ever saw, but his dark 
WiUiam J. Bryan eyes were mournful. He tried 
to lure me into buying a necklace by showing me 
how you can walk on the beans without breaking 
them. "Picked and strung by the aboriginal In- 
dians of the Staked Plain," he assured me; "and 
brought by me to this home of eastern culture. A 
sovereign remedy for seasickness and gout." 

"Billy," I said, "you amaze me. Last year 



^ WILDEY STREET 69 

those same necklaces were curing mumps and 
metaphysical error." 

He looked at me keenly. ''Oh, it's you, is it? 
Say, this is a bum town. Business is rotten. I'm 
going on to Washington tomorrow." 

"Sell one to Senator Sherman," I said; and 
passing by the allurements of Dumont's matinee — 
''The Devil in Jersey: He Terrified Woodbury, 
but He Couldn't Scare Us"— I gained the safety 
of the office. 



WILDEY STREET 

I SET out for a stroll with the Mountaineer, who 
knows more about Philadelphia than any one I 
ever heard of. He is long and lean and has a 
flashing eye; his swinging easy stride betrays the 
blood of southern highlands. He tracks down dis- 
tant streets and leafy glimpses with all the grim 
passion of a Kentucky scout on the trail of a lynx 
or some other varmint. No old house, no pictur- 
uresque corner or elbow alley escapes his penetrant 
gaze. He has secret trails and caches scattered 
through the great forests of Philadelphia, known to 
none but himself. With such a woodsman for 
guide good hunting was a matter of course. 

The first game we bagged was a tattooing studio 
at 814 Summer street. Let no one say that war 
means a decline of the fine arts, for to judge by the 
photographs in the window there are many who 
pine to have the Stars and Stripes, the American 



70 WILDE Y STREET 

eagle and the shield of the food administration 
frescoed on their broad chests. Professor Al E. 
Walters, the craftsman, proclaims himself artistic 
and reliable in this form of embroidery and the 
sitter has '^1500 up-to-date designs to choose 
from." The Mountaineer and I peered through 
the window and were interested to see the pro- 
fessor's array of tools laid out on his operating 
table. 

Passing by an imposing bust of Homer, which 
we found in front of a junk shop at 52S Noble 
street, the Mountaineer led me to see the old Ho- 
boes' Union headquarters at ^ Fifth and Button- 
wood streets. The war may have given tattooing 
a fillip, but it seems that it has been the decline 
and fall of philosophic hoboism, for the vagrants' 
clubhouse is dusty and void, now used as some sort 
of a warehouse. Work or fight and high wages 
have done for romantic loafing. The Mountaineer 
pointed out to me the kitchen in which the boes 
held their evening symposia over a kettle of hot 
stew. The house was donated through the munifi- 
cence of J. Eads Howe, the famous miUionaire 
hobo, and the Mountaineer admitted that he had 
spent many an entertaining evening there discuss- 
ing matters of intellectual importance. " How did 
you get the entree to such an exclusive circle?" 
I asked enviously. "I was a member of the union," 
he said, with just the least touch of vainglory. 

The Mountaineer led me north on Fourth street 
to where Wildey street begins its zigzag career. We 



WILDEY STREET 71 

found that the strip between Germantown avenue 
and Front street was buzzing with preparations for 
a '^ block party" in honor and benefit of its boys in 
service. All down the gay little vista flags were 
hanging out, Chinese lanterns had been strung on 
wires across the street, shop windows were criss- 
crossed with red, white and blue streamers and 
booths were going up on the pavement swathed 
in tricolored tissue paper. At one end of the block 
the curbstones had been whitewashed. We 
stopped to ask an elderly lady when the fun would 
begin. 

''Tonight and tomorrow night," she said. (It 
was then Friday afternoon.) '' Our boys are fight- 
ing for us and we want to do everything we can to 
help. I was at my summer residence when I heard 
about this party, and I came back at once. We've 
got to help as best we can." 

The sky was clouding over and the Mountaineer 
and I expressed the hope that rain wouldn't spoil 
the festivity. 

'' Oh, I hope not," she said. '' It doesn't seem as 
though the Lord would send rain when we're 
working for a good cause. We've hired a string 
band for the two nights — that's $60 — and we're 
going to have dancing in the street. You'd better 
come around. It's going to be a great time." 

Everybody in the street was busy with prepara- 
tions for the jollification, and I was deeply touched 
by this little community's expression of gratitude 
and confidence in its boys who are fighting. That 



72 WILDEY STREET 

is the real "stuff of triumph" of which the Presi- 
dent spoke. And one has only to pass along 
Wildey street to see that it is fine old native stock. 
It is an all-American street, of pure native breed, 
holding out stiffly and cleanly against the invasion 
of foreign population. The narrow side alleys look 
back into patches of vivid green; there are flower 
boxes and vines, and the pavements and marble 
steps are scrubbed as clean as water and soap will 
make them. A Httle further along we found a 
tavern dispensing Wildey street's favorite drink — 
pop and porter — and we halted to drink health to 
the block party. 

Beyond Shackamaxon street we struck into the 
unique silence and quiet cleanliness of "Fish- 
town." The quietness of those streets of quaint 
little houses is remarkable : in the golden flood of a 
warm afternoon they lay with hardly an echo to 
break the stillness. The prevaiUng color scheme 
is green and red: many of the houses are neat 
cottages built of wood; others are the old parti- 
colored brick that comes down from ancient days. 
Almost every house has its little garden, often 
outlined with whitened shells. It seems like a 
New England fishing village in the heart of the 
city. An occasional huckster's wagon rumbles 
smoothly along the asphalt paving; an occasional 
tinkle of a piano in some cool, darkened parlor. 
That is all. I can imagine no haunt of ancient 
peace more drowsy with stiflness and the treble 
chirp of birds than the tangled and overgrown 



I WILDEY STREET 73 

cemetery at Thompson street and Columbia 
avenue, in the hush of a hot summer siesta. 

There is a note of grace and comeHness in 
Wildey street Ufe that one attributes to the good 
native stock of the inhabitants. The children are 
clean and rounded and goodly. The Kttle girls 
have plump calves and crisp gingham dresses and 
blue eyes; they sit in their little gardens playing 
with paper dolls. Their brothers, with the mis- 
chief and errant humor that one expects of small 
boys, garnish walls and hoardings with whimsical 
legends scrawled in chalk. The old family tooth- 
brush that laid on the floor was one such that 
amused me. Another was a regrettable allegation 
that a (presumably absent) playmate was afflicted 
with ^'maines." The Mountaineer and I, after 
tudying the context, came to the conclusion that 
the scourge hinted at was ''mange!" 

Most thrilling of all, Wildey street becomes 
more and more maritime. Over the roofs of the 
houses one sees the masts of ships — always a sight 
to make the eager heart leap up. Cramps' ship- 
yard is at hand, and many of the front windows 
display the starred service cards of the United 
States Shipping Board. On Richmond street, 
parallel to Wildey, are ship chandlers' stores, with 
windows full of brass pulleys and chocks and 
cleats, coils of rope and port and starboard lan- 
terns. We hurried down toward the waterfront 
and peeped through the high board fence to see a 
steamer in drydock for a coat of camouflage. 



74 WILDEY STREET 

Great stripes of black and blue and white were 
being laid along her hull. 

Penn Treaty Park, at the foot of Columbia 
avenue, would deserve an essay of its own. Here, 
under a pavilion, the Mountaineer and I sat sur- 
rounded by the intoxicating presence of water and 
boats, watched the police patrol launches being 
overhauled, watched a little schooner loading 
lumber (I couldn't read her name, but she came 
from Hampton, Va.), watched the profile of Cam- 
den shining dimly through the rain. For a very 
smart rainstorm had come up and we sat and felt 
a pang of sympathy for the good people of Wildey 
street, whose Chinese lanterns and tricolored 
tissue paper would be ruined by the wet. We 
watched the crew of the tug Baltic getting ready 
for supper and dinghies nosing the piers and hob- 
bling with the rise and fall of the water, and we 
saw how the gleam of rain and mist on the roofs 
of Camden looked exactly like a fall of snow. Fish- 
town uses Penn Treaty Park as a place for loung- 
ing and smoking under the peeling sycamores and 
watching the panorama of the river. 

P. 8. I thought a great deal about the block 
party on Wildey street that night and hoped that 
the rain would not have spoilt it. So the next 
morning I got off the 8:13 at Columbia avenue and 
walked down past that deep vioHn note of the 
Columbia avenue sawmills to see how things were 
going. I found the same old lady on the sidewalk, 



HOG ISLAND 75 



hopefully renewing her red, white and blue tissue, 
and I noticed that all the children were wearing 
fantastic patriotic caps made of shirred and fluted 
paper. ^'Well," I said, "how did things go?" 
"Oh," she replied, "the rain hurt things a bit, but 
tonight's going to be the big night. It's going to 
bo a great time: you'd better come around." 
The stuff of triumph! 



HOG ISLAND 

My only regret was that my friend John Fitz- 
gerald didn't take Rudyard KipUng or Wilham 
McFee or Philip Gibbs down to Hog Island, in- 
stead of a humble traveler whose hand can never do 
justice to that marvelous epic of human achieve- 
ment. It would be worth Mr. Kipling's while to 
cross the Atlantic just to see the Island. 

Far across the low-lying meadows the great 
fringe of derricks rises against the sky. Along a 
beautiful soUd highw^ay, over the Penrose Ferry 
drawbridge and past the crumbled ramparts of 
old Fort Mifflin, motors and trolley cars now go 
flashing down to the huge shipyard, where eigh- 
teen months ago a truck struggled along a miry 
country road carrying enough lumber to put up a 
timekeeper's shack. The story of that great drama 
of patient courage and effort lies behind and under- 
neath all one sees at Hog Island. As we walked 
along the marvelous stretch of fifty shipways, each 
carrying a vessel in course of construction, and as 
6 



76 HOG ISLAND 



Fitz and I stood on the bridge of the Saluda, one 
of the eleven steamers now getting their finishing 
touches at the seven huge piers, one had a vision 
of the Island as it was during that first winter. 
Engineers and laborers wrestled with frozen swamp 
and bhzzard snows. Workmen were brought from 
Philadelphia day by day, roped in like sardines in 
open trucks, arriving numbed to the bone. Per- 
haps some day there will come some poet great 
enough to tell the drama of Hog Island as it ought 
to be told. The men who gritted their teeth and 
put it through will never tell. They are of the old 
stalwart breed that works with its hands. As they 
talk you can divine something of what they en- 
dured. 

I don't believe there is a more triumphant place 
on earth than Hog Island these days. Ships are 
the most expressive creatures of men's hands, and 
as I stood with Fitz on the bridge of the Saluda 
and looked out through a driving rain on the 
comely gray hulls of those 7500-ton cargo carriers, 
it was hard to resist the thought that each of them 
had a soul of her own and was partaking in the 
general exultation. Eight ships now going about 
their business on the world's waters, eleven at the 
outfitting piers getting ready to smell blue water, 
and fifty on the ways — the Island is launching one 
every Saturday — that is the record. Smoke was 
drifting from the funnels of several, whose turbine 
engines were getting their tuning up. 

These thousand-foot piers, each of which can 



HOG ISLAND 77 



accommodate four 8000-ton ships at a time, will 
one day make Philadelphia one of the world's 
greatest ports. And the thought that every lover 
of seafaring will bring away with him is that these 
fabricated ships, built according to a set plan with 
interchangeable parts, are beautiful ships. Hum- 
ble cargo carriers, but to an untutored eye they 
have much of the loveliness of form of some of the 
statehest Hners. Looking into the newly finished 
chartroom, wheelroom and other deckhouses of 
the Saluda, I envied her future master. 

We climbed down steep steel ladders to look at 
the engine and boiler rooms. No grimy stokehold 
on these ships — they are oil-burners. One of the 
furnaces was lit, and through the half-open door 
one could see a roaring glow of flame. In the engine 
room quiet and skillful workmen were doing mys- 
terious things to a huge turbine. The shining cyl- 
inders and huge pistons of the old reciprocating 
engine were missing; in their place a bewildering 
complex of wheels and valves and asbestos covered 
piping. Looking down from above the engine 
room was a vast echoing cavern, spotted with 
orange electric bulbs, with the occasional groan 
and humming of electric motors and men in over- 
alls moving quietly about their tasks. The quiet- 
ness of Hog Island is one of its curiously impressive 
features. It is not a wilderness of roaring, frenzied 
machinery. Everything moves with efficient 
docility. Even the riveting guns that echo inside 
the hollow caves of unfinished hulls are hardly as 



78 HOG ISLAND 



clamorous as I had expected. In the plate and 
angle shops vast traveling cranes swing overhead 
with the ease and silence of huge dark birds. 
Acetylene torches, blowing dainty little wisps of 
blue-gold flame, slice through half -inch steel plates 
while the dissolving metal dribbles down in yellow 
bubbles and streamers and a shower of brilliant 
sparks flies off gently and quietly. Great wedges 
descend on flat plates and bend them into right 
angles with only a soft crunch. 

Scahng tall scaffolds we clambered over one of 
the half finished hulls, a naked shell of steel echo- 
ing with sudden fierce outbursts of riveting. As it 
was raining the out-of-door riveting had ceased, 
as whenever there is danger of water getting under 
the flange of the rivet there is a liability of the 
work not being quite watertight. But between 
decks some of the men were hard at work. Across 
the deck red-hot rivets came flying through the air 
from the brazier; these were deftly caught in a 
metal cone by the passer. With a long pair of 
tongs he inserts the glowing finger of metal in the 
hole; the backer-up holds it rigid with a com- 
pressed-air hammer, while the riveter, on the other 
side of the plates, mushrooms down the shining 
stalk of the rivet with his air gun. It is fascinating 
to watch the end of the rivet flattening under the 
chattering blows of the gun. An expert riveting 
team can drive several hundred rivets a day, and 
when paid on piecework the team gets six and one- 
half cents per rivet. This is divided among the 



HOG ISLAND 79 



team, usually in the proportion of 40 per cent to 
the riveter, 30 per cent to the backer-up and 15 
per cent each to heater and passer. Many expert 
riveters earn as much as $60 a week. 

We crawled under the bottom of the Schoodic 
which is to be launched tomorrow morning. She 
had just had her first coat of paint, and her tall, 
graceful bow loomed high in air on the slanting 
shipway. Mr. White, the engineer in charge of the 
launchings, was kind enough to show me the inge- 
nious system of shores, packing and ''sandjacks" 
which holds up the hull on the ways and the special 
Hog Island grease which is used to ease the ship's 
slide toward the water. The cunning manipula- 
tion by which the ship's great weight is thrown off 
the shores onto the ''sand jacks," and then lowered 
by removing the sand from these iron boxes, would 
require an essay in itself. Not one of Hog Island's 
launchings — and they have had nineteen — has 
been marred by any hitch. Mr. White told me 
that his gang of 120 men can put through a launch- 
ing in two hours and a haK from the time they first 
begin work. 

In the training school, where about 200 men are 
learning the various shipbuilding trades, 92 per 
cent of the pupils are former soldiers and sailors. 
They are all men of powerful physique, but many 
of them were in sedentary clerical occupations 
before the war. Many a man who has served in 
the army has no taste now to re-enter a trade that 
will keep him indoors eight or ten hours a day. 



80 HOG ISLAND 

I must confess to an envy of those brawny fellows 
who were learning to drive rivets. And after the 
army pay of $30 or so a month it must seem good 
to get 120 a week while learning the job. 

Hog Island is a poem, a vast bracing chant of 
manly achievement in every respect, that is, save 
the names of the ships they are building down 
there. I don't think Hog Island workmen will 
ever quite forgive Mrs. Wilson for the names she 
chose for their cherished and beautiful ships! 
Quistconck, Saccarappa, Sacandaga, Saguache, 
Sapinero, Sagaporack, Schoodic, Saugus, Schroon 
— what will homely sailormen make of these odd 
Indian syllables? As one said to me, whimsically, 
''Think of some wireless operator, calling for help, 
trying to get that name across!" 

We must assume, however, that no Hog Island 
ship will ever be in distress, from her own fault at 
any rate. The experiment of "fabricated" ships 
was watched with eagerness by all shipping experts 
some of whom didn't beUeve it could be successful. 
The first chapter of Hog Island's epic closes fitly 
with this cablegram, received the other day from 
the American International Shipbuilding Corpora- 
tion's representative in Rome : 

Rome, March 16. — Quistconck arrived March 
8th, Savona. Excellent voyage. Has been in- 
spected by representatives of government, steam- 
ship companies and banks. Opinion favorable. 
Hope you will be able to send more of that type. 



SOUTH BROAD STREET 81 

Hog Island men have accomplished what they 
have partly because they go about their work with 
such a sense of humor. There are more grins to 
the square acre down there than any place I ever 
visited. The Hog Islander who drove me down was 
grumbhng because the man driving the car in front 
didn't give the usual signal when turning across 
our path. ^'Why doesn't he hold out his hand?" 
he muttered. ''Must be afraid a flivver will run 
up his arm." That's the jovial spirit of Hog 
Island. 



SOUTH BROAD STREET 
One of the singularly futile and freakish little 
"literary" magazines that flourish among desic- 
cated women and men whose minds are not old 
enough for the draft proudly raises the slogan that 
it ''Makes no compromise with the public taste." 
What I like about South Broad street is that it 
does make compromise with the public taste, every 
possible compromise. In the course of a three-mile 
stroll from the City Hall down to the South Broad 
Street plaza one may see almost every variety of 
human interest. It is as though South Broad street 
had made up its mind to see all phases of life 
before leaping into the arms of Uncle Sam at 
League Island. It is like the young man's last 
night with the boys before enlisting. 

"Broad and Chestnut" is a Philadelphia phrase 
of great sanctity. It is uttered with even greater 



82 SOUTH BROAD STREET 

awe than the New Yorker's "Broadway and 
Forty-second," as though the words summed up 
the very vibration and puise of the town's most 
sacred life. And yet why is it that Broad street 
seems to me more at ease, more itself, when it gets 
away from the tremendous cliffs of vast hotels 
and office mountains? Our Philadelphia streets 
do not care to be mere tunnels, like the canyon 
flumes of Manhattan. We have a lust for sun and 
air. 

So when Broad street escapes from the shadow 
of its own magnificence it runs just a little wild. 
In its sun-swept airy stretches perhaps it abuses 
its freedom a little. It kicks up its heels and gets 
into its old clothes. Certainly as soon as one gets 
south of Lombard street one sees the sudden 
change. Even the vast and dignified gray fagade 
of the Ridgway Library does not abash our high- 
way for more than a moment. It dashes on be- 
tween a vast clothing factory and the old '^ South- 
ern and Western Railroad Station." It indulges 
itself in small clothing stores, lemonade stands and 
all manner of tumble-down monkey business. It 
seems to say, ''I can look just like Spring Garden 
street, if I want to." 

Perhaps it is because William Penn on the City 
Hall is looking the other way that South Broad 
street feels it can cut up without reserve. 

The Ridgway Library ought to be able to daunt 
this frisking humor, for a more solemn and repres- 
sive erection was never planned. But what a fas- 



SOUTH BROAD STREET 83 

cinating place it is, though I fear not much of 
South Broad street ever takes the trouble to open 
those iron gates marked '^Pull." Perhaps if they 
had been marked "Push^^ the pubhc would have 
responded more eagerly. But who are we to dis- 
cuss the subtleties of advertising psychology? As 
I pass the long, heavily-pillared frontage of the 
Hbrary I seem to hear the quiet, deliberate ticking 
of the clock in the cool, gloomy reading room and 
smell the faint, delicious, musty fragrance of the 
old volumes. It is no small thrill to step inside 
and revel in the dim scholarly twilight of this 
palace of silence, to pore over the rare books in 
the glass showcases and explore the alcoves where 
the marvelous collection of chess books is kept. 
Those alcoves look out over a little playground at 
the back, where the shady benches would be an 
ideal place for a solemn pipe; but alas no men are 
admitted. The playground is reserved for women 
^nd children. 

Very different is the old railroad station across 
the way, now used as a freight depot. Built in 
1852, it was Philadelphia's crack terminus fifty 
years ago, and as one studies the crumbled brown- 
stone front one thinks of all the eager and excited 
feet that must have passed into the great arched 
hall. Now it is boarded up in front, but inside it 
is crammed with box cars and vast cases stenciled 
'^Rush — Military Supplies — U. S. Anny." Sixty 
freight cars can be loaded there at one time. One 
thinks what emotions that glass-roofed shed must 



84 SOUTH BROAD STREET 

have seen in Civil War times. I suppose many a 
train of men in blue said good-by to mothers and 
sweethearts along those platforms. That thought 
was with me as I stood inside the old station, 
which in spite of its bustle of freight is filled with 
the haunting sadness of all places that are old and 
decayed and echoing with the whispers of long ago. 
Does it seem absurd to sentimentalize over a rail- 
way station less than seventy years old? Well, I 
think a railway station is one of the most romantic 
places in the world. I hke to imagine the old loco- 
motives with their flaring stacks. And as I crossed 
Washington avenue (which runs just south of the 
station) I remembered a hot day in June twenty 
years ago when I tugged a roll of steamer rugs 
down that street from the trolley to the American 
Line pier. We were going on board the old Belgen- 
land, bound for Liverpool. Somewhere along the 
hot, grimy pavement a barrel of molasses had 
broken open; I recall the strong, sweet smell. 
Childhood does not forget such adventures. 

Below the quartermaster depot of the marine 
corps and the Third Regiment Armory, Broad 
street recalls its more sober responsibilities. Sud- 
denly it reaUzes the fleeting uncertainty of life; 
perhaps because half the houses hereabouts are 
the offices of doctors and undertakers. It falls into 
a quiet residential humor about Wharton street 
and fines itself with trees and shady awnings. It 
seemed to me I could discern a breath of Italy in 
the air. At an Italian undertaker's a large and 



SOUTH BROAD STREET 85 

sumptuous coffin was lying on the pavement with- 
out any embarrassment, name-plate and all; pre- 
sumably waiting for its silent passenger. Among 
the womenfolk white stockings and sparkhng 
black eyes betrayed the Latin blood. And I saw 
that a church lettered its notice board both in 
Itahan and Enghsh. ''Ingresso Libero," it said, 
which I take to mean ''Everybody welcome!" 
The same sort of hospitality is evinced by the doc- 
tors and dentists. They all have httle notices on 
their doors: "Walk in without knocking." 

In a quaint effort to retrieve its brief escapade 
into shabby Bohemianism, Broad street now goes 
in for an exaggerated magnificence. It has a taste 
for ornate metal doorknobs and brass handles. 
(I cannot resist the thought that these mannerisms 
were caught from the undertakers.) Moving- 
picture theatres are done in a kind of Spanish 
stucco. Basement gratings are gilded; parlor 
windows are banded with strips of colored glass. 
The brownstone fronts are gabled and carved; 
cornices are fret worked. There are plaster statues 
in the little side gardens. It is the opposite s^ving 
of the architect's pendulum from the plain and 
beautiful old houses of Pine and Spruce streets, 
where Philadelphia expresses herself in the lovely 
simphcity of rich old brick and white shutters. 

Apparently Broad street lost hope of gaining 
salvation by ornamenting its house fronts, for 
about Morris and Mifflin streets it turns to educa- 
tion and philanthropy. It puts up large hospitals, 



86 SOUTH BROAD STREET 

and the vast gray building of the South Philadel- 
phia High School, where, reading backward 
through the stained glass transom I discerned the 
grave and very Bostonian motto: ''Work — Self- 
rehance — Culture — Life." But more exhilarating 
to me was the Southern Home for Friendless Chil- 
dren at Morris street. Its large playground is sur- 
rounded by a high stone wall. I could easily have 
scaled it and would have loved to smoke a pipe 
sitting up there to watch the children playing in- 
side. (I could hear their laughter, and caught a 
glimpse of a small boy as he flew up in the air on 
a swing.) But I feared penalties and embarrass- 
ments. It does not do to love anything too well; 
people naturally are suspicious of you. And 
though my heart was warm toward the Southern 
Home, I didn't quite Kke to do what I yearned 
for. That would have been to ring the door bell 
and ask to go in and play in the garden with the 
others. Instead I snooped round the wall until I 
found a corner with a ghmpse into the shady ground 
where the urchins were busy. One small boy was 
working in his garden, others were burning up rub- 
bish and hammering at something along the wall. 
I stood there a long time, listening to the warm, 
drowsy hum of the afternoon, and almost wished 
I were a friendless child. 

After this excursion into culture and charity, 
Broad street feels the need of one more whistle- 
wetting before it wanders off onto the vast expanse 
of sunny pollen-scented meadows that stretch to- 



THE RECLUSE OF FRANKLIN SQUARE 87 

ward the dry zones of League Island. For this 
purpose exists the cool haven of McBride, on the 
corner of Moyamensing avenue. There I encoun- 
tered one of the best beakers of shandygaff in my 
experience. And — wonder of wonders — it can still 
be bought for a nickel. 



THE RECLUSE OF FRANKLIN SQUARE 

Who can describe the endless fascination, allure- 
ment and magic of the city? It is Hke a great 
forest, full of enchantment for the eye and ear. 
What groves and aisles and vistas there are for 
wandering, what thickets and underbrush to ex- 
plore! And how curious it is that most of us who 
frequent the city follow only little beaten paths of 
our own, rarely looking round the corner or in- 
vestigating (in the literal sense) unfamiliar by- 
ways. We tread our own routine, from terminal 
or trolley to office, to the customary lunching 
place, back to the office, and home. Year after 
year we do this, until the city is for us nothing but 
a few tedious streets we know by heart. 

But how dull it is to be confined to one fife, one 
habit, one groove of conduct. Do you ever pine 
to shed the garment of well-worn behavior, to 
wander off into the side-paths of the city, to lose 
yourself in its great teeming fife? The thought is 
fascinating to me. I hke to imagine myself dis- 
appearing one day from my accustomed haunts, 
sHpping away into some other quarter of the town. 



88 THE RECLUSE OF FRANKLIN SQUARE 

taking up entirely new habits and environment. 
Ah, that would be an adventure! 

I think I would emigrate to Frankhn Square 
which, after all, is only a few blocks north of the 
territory where I oscillate every day , but it seems 
almost Hke a different continent. I would go up 
to Frankhn Square, take a room at one of those 
theatrical lodging houses on the western side of 
the square, grow a beard, wear a wide sombrero 
hat, and keep my pockets full of sweetmeats for 
the children of the square. In the course of a few 
months quite a legend would accumulate about 
me. I would be pointed out as one of the char- 
acters of the neighborhood. Newspaper reporters 
would be sent to interview me. Then I would 
shave and move on to some other home. 

Frankhn Square is a jolly place on a warm day. 
There are red and pink geraniums round the pool 
in the middle. There is the drowsy whirr and hum 
of lawn mowers. There is a sweet, dull air moving 
gently across the wide grass plots; the flag waves 
heavily on the tall staff. There is a whole posse of 
baby carriages gathered together in a shady patch 
of pavement, with usually one small girl left to 
"mind" them while the other httle guardians are 
sprinkling themselves with water at the stand- 
pipe, or playing hopscotch in the sun. You mind 
my baby and I'll mind yours, is the tacit under- 
standing of these ragged httle damsels. But, really 
it is surprising how little minding the Franklin 
Square babies seem to need. They lie in their car- 



THE RECLUSE OF FRANKLIN SQUARE 80 

riages furling and unfurling their toes with a kind 
of spartan restraint. They refuse to bawl or to 
hurl themselves upon the paving below, because 
they know that their young nurses are having a 
good time. 

Franklin Square pohcemen are stout and very 
jovial. An Italian woman was sitting on a bench 
opposite mine; she had a baby on her lap, one 
leaning against her knee, three sitting on the bench 
with her, and two in the carriage. Seven in all 
and I gathered from her remarks that six of them 
were boys. ''Quite an army ! " said the stout police- 
man, passing by. Her face gleamed with the quick 
pleasure of the Latin race. ''Ah, yes," she said, 
"Italians good for boys!" 

On the west side of the square are the theatrical 
boarding houses, w^here ladies with very short 
skirts and silk stockings air little fuzzy white dogs 
that just match the soiled marble steps. Midway 
in the row is a bulky chocolate-colored church, 
Deutsche Evang. Lutherische, according to its 
signboard. Gottesdienst, Morgens 10:45, Abends 
7:30. It is well for us to remember that God is 
worshiped in all languages. And up at the Httle 
news-stall at the corner of Vine street, the Hterary 
and dramatic leanings of Franklin Square seem to 
be reflected in the assortment of paper-backed 
volumes on display. "The Confessions of an 
Actress," "The Stranglers of Paris/' and "Chicago 
by Night" are among the books there, also some 
exceedingly dingy editions of Boccaccio and 



90 THE RECLUSE OF FRANKLIN SQUARE 

Napoleon's Dream Book. I could learn a good 
deal, I am sure, by studying those volumes. 

Franklin Square is full of color. The green 
spaces are islanded in a frame of warm, red brick. 
The fountain bubbles whitely, the flag is an eager 
spot of brightness on the tall white mast. Shop 
windows seem to display a broader, more lilting 
kind of poster than they do on Market street. 
There is one on a by-street representing a young 
man blowing heart-shaped smoke rings and a 
glorious young woman is piercing them with a 
knitting needle or some other sharp instrument. 

I don't know just what I would do for a Hving 
on Frankhn Square. The only thought that has 
occurred to me is this: some one must have to 
look after those Httle white dogs while their de- 
bonair mistresses are at the theatre. Why couldn't 
I do that, for a modest fee? I would take them all 
out at night and tow them through the fountain 
pool. It would serve to bleach them. 

Another thing I could do, which I have always 
wanted to do, would be to decipher the last line of 
the small tombstone that stands over the pathetic 
grave of Benjamin Franklin's little son. That is 
not far from the square. The stone reads, as far as 
I can make it out, Francis F., Son of Benjanmi 
and Deborah Franklin, Deceased Nov. 21, 1736. 
Aged 4 years. The number of months and days I 
can't make out, nor the last hne of the epitaph, 
which begins with the sadly expressive word De- 
light. It is much effaced, and without squatting 



THE RECLUSE OF FRANKLIN SQUARE 91 

on Ben Franklin's tomb I can't read it. And as 
I there are usually some young ladies sitting knitting 
on the bench by the grave I am too bashful to do 
'that. But if I Hved in Frankhn Square I would 
find a way somehow. 

But much as I love it, I doubt if I could live in 
iPVanklin Square long. There is an air of unrest 
about it, of vagabond whimsy. The short-skirted 
ladies would come and go, and sooner or later the 
bearded recluse, with his pocket full of candy, and 
Ihis sombrero hat, would disappear and only the 
children would lament his going. For I know that 
if I were a wandering blade I could never resist a 
summons like this, which I found posted up just 
off the square. Here speak Romance and Adven- 
ture, with golden lute: 

MEN WANTED TO TRAVEL 

WITH R 'S CIRCUS 

A CHANCE TO SEE THE COUNTRY 

EXCELLENT BOARD AND COMFORTABLE 

SLEEPING CARS PROVIDED BY THE MANAGEMENT 



92 CATTERINA OF SPRING GARDEN ST. 



CATTERINA OF SPRING GARDEN 
STREET 

Spring Garden street is a pleasant thorough- 
fare for wandering on a cool summer morning about 
eight-thirty of the clock. It has been my diversion, 
lately, to get off the Reading train at the Spring 
Garden Station and walk to the office from there 
instead of pursuing the too famihar route from the 
Terminal. Try it some day, you victims of habit. 
To start the day by a httle variation of routine is 
an excellent excitement for the mind. 

That after-breakfast period, before the heat be- 
gins, has a freshness and easy vigor of its own. 
Housewives are out scrubbing the white marble 
steps; second-hand furniture dealers have spread 
their pieces on the pavement for better inspection 
and sit in their morris chairs by the curb to read 
the morning paper. Presumably the more ease 
and comfort they show the more plainly the 
desirabihty of a second-hand morris chair will be 
impressed on the passer-by; such is the psychol- 
ogy of their apparent indolence. A fire engine 
with maroon chassis and bright silver boiler rum- 
bles comfortably back to its station after putting 
out a fire somewhere. The barbers are out wind- 
ing up the clock-work that keeps their red and 
white striped emblems revolving. And here and 
there on the pavement, recHning with rich rehsh 



CATTERINA OF SPRING GARDEN ST. 93 

where the sunhght falls in white jjatches, are gray 
and yellow cats. 

The cats of Spring Garden street are plump and 
of high cheer and they remind me of the most 
famous cat that ever lived in that neighborhood. 
She was a big tortoise-shell puss called Catterina 
(Kate for short) and she lived in a httle three- 
story brick cottage on Brandy wine street, which is 
j ust off Seventh street behind the garage that now 
stands on the northwest corner of Seventh and 
Spring Garden. Catterina played a distinguished, 
even a noble, part in American literature. I am 
the gladder to celebrate her because I do not be- 
lieve any one has ever paid her a tribute before. 
You see, she happened to be the particular pet and 
playmate of Mr. and Mrs. Edgar Allan Poe. 

It is curious that Philadelphia pays so little 
honor to that house on Brandywine street, which is 
associated with the brief and poignant domestic 
happiness of that brilliant and tragic genius. Poe 
Uved in Philadelphia from 1838 until 1844, and 
during the last two or three years of his stay he 
occupied the little brick house on Brandywine 
street. One of those who visited it then described 
it as ''a small house, in one of the pleasant and 
silent neighborhoods far from the center of the 
town, and though slightly and cheaply furnished 
everything in it was so tasteful and so fitly dis- 
posed that it seemed altogether suitable for a man 
of genius." What is now only a rather dingy back 
yard was then a little garden full of roses, grape- 



94 CATTERINA OF SPRING GARDEN ST. 

vine and creepers. Perhaps the pear tree that is 
still the most conspicuous feature of the yard was 
growing in Poe's tenancy. It was a double tree, 
with twin trunks, one of which was shattered by 
lightning quite recently. 

Mrs. William Owens, who has lived in the house 
for eight years, was kind enough to take me 
through and showed me everything from attic to 
cellar. The house is built against a larger four- 
story dwelling which fronts on Seventh street, 
now numbered as 530. In Poe's day the two 
houses were separate, the larger one being the 
property of a well-to-do Friend who was his land- 
lord. Since then doors have been pierced and the 
whole is used as one dweUing, in which Mrs. Owens 
takes several boarders. It would interest Poe 
perhaps (as he was once in the army), to know 
that a service flag with three stars hangs from the 
front of the house. The stars represent John 
Pierce, Harry Bernhardt and Dominic Dimonico, 
the first of these being, as I understand, a foster 
son of Mr. and Mrs. Owens. 

It is not hard to imagine the charm of this snug 
little house as it may have been in the days when 
Poe (in his early thirties) and his sylphHke young 
wife and heroic mother-in-law, Mrs. Clemm, faced 
the problem of living on the irregular earnings of 
editing and writing. Spring Garden was then near 
the northern outskirts of the city: the region was 
one of sober ruddy brick (of that rich hue dear to 
Philadelphia hearts) and well treed and gardened. 



CATTERINA OF SPRING GARDEN ST. 95 

Until very recent years an old lady was living, a 
neighbor of Mrs. Owens, who remembered how 
Virginia Poe used to sit at the window and play 
her harp. 

The house is well and solidly built; the door 
opening toward Brandywine street still has its 
original old-fashioned bolt lock, which Poe's hand 
must have fastened many and many a time. The 
little dining room has a fireplace, now filled in with 
a stove. In one of the rooms upstairs (according to 
local tradition) "The Raven" was written; and 
there are two bedrooms with casement windows in 
the attic. Some of Poe's finest work was done in 
this house, among other tales probably ''The Mur- 
ders in the Rue Morgue," ''The Gold Bug" and 

The Black Cat." And here a curious coincidence 
may be noted. It will be remembered that in the 
story of "The Black Cat" Poe describes how some 
very unpleasant digging was done in a cellar. In 
cleaning the cellar of the Brandywine street house 
Mrs. Owens discovered recently a place where the 
bricks in the flooring had been removed and a 
section of planking had been put in. Is it pos- 
sible that this circumstance suggested to Poe the 
grisly theme of his story? Just for fun I would 
very much like to explore under those boards. 
They are old and have evidently been there a long 
time. 

Imagination likes to conjure up the little house- 
hold: the invalid Virginia Poe (it was in this house 
that she broke a blood vessel while singing), the 



96 CATTERINxV OF SPRING GARDEN ST. 

stout-hearted and all-sacrificing mother-in-law — 
''Muddy/' as the poet affectionately called her — 
the roses that grew over the wall, and (let us not 
forget her) Catterina, the cherished pet. Catterina 
was very much a member of the family. In April, 
1844, when Poe and his wife moved to a boarding 
house in New York, where they found the table 
amazingly cheap and plentiful, he wrote to Mrs. 
Clemm : 

"The house is old and looks buggy. The cheap- 
est board I ever knew. I wish Kate could see it — 
she would faint. Last night, for supper, we had 
the nicest tea you ever drank, strong and hot — 
wheat bread and rye bread — cheese — tea cakes 
(elegant) , a great dish (two dishes) of elegant ham 
and two of cold veal, piled up like a mountain — 
three dishes of the cakes and everything in the 
greatest profusion. No fear of starving here." 

Poor Catterina! (or Kate, as they sometimes 
called her). Does not this suggestion of her 
swooning imply that she may have had to go on 
rather short commons in the little home on Bran- 
dywine street? But after all, there must have been 
mice in the cellar, unless the ghost of the Black 
Cat frightened them away. 

In the same letter, written from New York the 
day after the Poes had gone there to look for better 
fortune, he says ''Sissy (his wife) had a hearty cry 
last night because you and Catterina weren't 
here." 

But it was in the winter of 1846-47, when Mrs. 



( ATTERINA OF SPRING GARDEN ST. 97 

Poe lay dying of consumption in the cottage at 
Fordham, that Catterina came to her highest 
glory. The description of that scene touches upon 
a human nerve of pity and compassion that must 
give the most callous a pang. Poe himself, har- 
assed by poverty, pride and illness, had to witness 
the sufferings of his failing wife without ability to 
ease them. This is the description of a kind- 
hearted woman who saw them then: 

''There was no clothing on the bed but a snow- 
white counterpane and sheets. The weather was 
cold and the sick lady had the dreadful chills that 
accompany the hectic fever of consumption. She 
lay on the straw bed, wrapped in her husband's 
great-coat with a large tortoise-shell cat in her 
bosom. The wonderful cat seemed conscious of 
her great usefulness. The coat and the cat were 
the sufferer's only means of warmth." 

Perhaps Philadelphia will some day do fitting 
honor to the memory of that ill-starred household 
that knew its best happiness in the little house on 
Brandywine street. Mr. Owens, who is a druggist, 
has whimsically set up in the front parlor one of 
the big scarlet papier-mache ravens that are used 
to advertise Red Raven SpHts. But it seems to me 
that Philadelphia might go just a little further 
than that in honoring the house where ''The 
Raven" may have been written. 



98 A SLICE OF SUNLIGHT 



A SLICE OF SUNLIGHT 
About a quarter to 9 in the morning, at this 
time of year, a shce of our pale primrose-colored 
March sunhght cuts the bleak air across the junc- 
tion of Broad and Chestnut streets and falls like 
a shining knife blade upon the low dome of the 
Girard Trust Building. Among those towering 
chffs of masonry it is hard to see just where this 
shaving of brightness slips through, burning in the 
gray-lilac shadows of that stone valley. But there 
it is, and it always sets me thinking. 

Man has traveled far in his strange pilgrimage 
and solaced himself with many lean and brittle 
husks. It is curious to think how many of his 
ingenious inventions are merely makeshifts to ren- 
der tolerable the hardships and hmitations he has 
imposed upon himself in the name of ''civiliza- 
tion." How often his greatest cunning is ex- 
pended in devising some pathetic substitute for 
the joy that once was his by birthright! He shuts 
himself up in beethng gibraltars of concrete, and 
thinks with pride of the wires, fans and pipes that 
bring him light, air and Warmth. And yet sun- 
shine and sky and the glow of blazing faggots were 
once common to all! He talks to his friends by 
telephone, telegraph or machine-written letters 
instead of in the heart-easing face-to-face of more 
leisured times. He invents printing presses to do 
his thinking for him, reels of translucent celluloid 



^ A SLICE OF SUNLIGHT 99 

to thrill him with vicarious romance. Not until 
the desire of killing other men came upon him did 
he perfect the lovehest of his toys — the airplane. 
How far, in his perverse flight from the natural 
sources of joy, has his love of trouble brought him ! 

So it is that one poor, thin, thwarted filament of 
sunlight, falling for a few precious minutes across 
a chasmed city street, seems so dazzling a boon 
and surprise that he passes enchanted on his dark- 
ened pavement. Man, how easily you are pleased! 

Is there any one, in our alternate moods of 
bafflement and exultation, who has not brooded on 
this queer divergence of Life and Happiness? 
Sometimes we feel that we have been trapped: 
that Life, which once opened' a vista so broad and 
golden, has somehow jostled and hurried us into a 
corner, into a narrow treadmill of meaningless 
gestures that exhaust our spirit and our mirth. In 
recent years all humanity has been herded in one 
vast cage of confusion and dread from which there 
seemed no egress. Now we are slowly, bitterly, 
perplexedly groping our way out of it. And per- 
haps in the difficult years of rebuilding each man 
will make some effort to architect his existence 
anew, creeping humbly and hopefully a little 
closer to the fountains of beauty and strength that 
lie all about us. When did we learn to cut our- 
selves apart from earth's miracles of refreshment? 
To wall ourselves in from the sun's great laughter, 
to forget the flamboyant pageantry of the world? 
Earth has wisdom for all our follies, heahng for all 



100 A SLICE OF SUNLIGHT 

our wounds, dusk and music for all our peevish 
ness. Who taught us that we could do without 
her? Can j^ou hear the skylark through a tele 
phone or catch that husky whisper of the pines in f 
dictograph? Can you keep your heart young in i 
row of pigeonholes? Will you forego the surf o 
ocean rollers to be serf to a rolltop desk? 

Little by httle, and in haphazard ways, wisdon 
comes to a man. No matter how resolutely hi 
shuts his ears. Truth keeps pricking within him. 
What a futility, what a meanness and paltriness o 
living this is that would send us hence with al 
Life's great secrets unlearned, her ineffable beau- 
ties unguessed, her great foUo only hastily 
glimpsed. Here is this spinning ball for us to mar 
vel at, turning in an ever-changing bath of color 
and shadow, blazed with sunshine, drenched witl 
silver rain, leaning through green and orange veil; 
of dusk, and we creep with bhnkered eyes along 
narrow alleys of unseeing habit. What will ii 
profit us to keep a balance at the bank if we can't 
keep a balance of youth and sanity in our souls? 
Of what avail to ship carloads of goods north, east, 
south and west, if we cannot spare time to know 
our own dreams, to exchange our doubts and 
yearnings with our friends and neighbors? 

In every man's heart there is a secret nerve that 
answers to the vibration of beauty. I can imagine 
no more fascinating privilege than to be allowed to 
ransack the desks of a thousand American business 
men, men supposed to be hard-headed, absorbed 



A SLICE OF SUNLIGHT 101 



n brisk commerce. Somewhere in each desk one 
\vould find some hidden betrayal of that man's 
orivate worship. It might be some old newspaper 
"clipping, perhaps a poem that had once touched 
;iim, for even the humblest poets are stout par- 
isans of reality. It might be a photograph of 
i'hildren playing in the surf, or a little box of fish- 
hooks, or a soiled old timetable of some queer 
^ackwoods railroad or primitive steamer service 
'hat had once carried him into his land of heart's 
lesire. 

I remember a friend of mine, a man much per- 
)lexed by the cares of earth, but slow to give 
, itterance to his inner and tenderer impulses, tell- 
"ng me how he first grasped the meaning and 
^alue of these inscrutable powers of virtue that 
'url the whole universe daily around our heads in 
II unerring orbit. For some reason or other — he 
•^.^yas writing a book, I think, and sought a place 
ui quiet — he had drifted for some winter weeks to 
the shore of a southern bay, down in Florida. 
When he came back he told me about it. It was 
several years ago, but I remember the odd look in 
his eyes as he tried to describe his experience. ''I 
never knew until now," he said, ''what sunshine 
and sky meant. I had always taken them for 
granted before." He told me of the strange sensa- 
tion of lightness and quiet smiling that had flooded 
through him in that land where Nature writes her 
benignant lessons so plainly that all must draw 
their own conclusions. He told me of sunset 



102 A SLICE OF SUNLIGHT 

flushes over long, purple waters, and of lying on 
sand beaches wrapped in sunshine, all the prob- 
lems of human intercourse soothed away in a 
naked and unquestioning content. What he said 
was very little, but watching in his eyes I could 
guess what had happened. He had found more 
than sunshine and color and an arc of violet sea. 
He had found a new philosophy, a new strength 
and realization of the worthiness of life. He had 
traveled far to find it: it might just as well be 
learned in Independence Square any sunny day 
when the golden light falls upon springing grass. 
It is strange that men should have to be re- 
minded of these things ! How patiently, how per- 
sistently, with what dogged and misdirected pluck, 
they have taught themselves to ignore the ele- 
mental blessings of mankind, subsisting instead on 
pale and wizened and ingenious substitutes. It 
is like a man who should shoulder for a place at a 
quick lunch counter when a broad and leisurely 
banquet table was spread free just around the 
corner. The days tick by, as busy, as fleeting, as- 
full of empty gestures as a moving picture film. 
We crowd old age upon ourselves and run out to 
embrace it, for age is not measured by number of 
days but by the exhaustion of each day. Twenty 
days lived at slow pulse, in harmony with earth's 
loveliness, are longer than two hundred crowded 
with feverish appointments and disappointments. 
Many a man has lived fifty or sixty hectic years 
and never yet learned the unreckonable endless- 



UP THE WISSAHICKON 103 

ness of one day's loitering, measured only by the 
gracious turning of earth and sun. Some one often 
asks me, '^Why don't you wind the clocks?" But 
in those rare moments when I am sane clocks do 
not interest me. 

Something of these thoughts flashes into my mind 
as I see that beam of pale and narrow sunlight 
fallen upon the roof of that bank building. How 
strange it is, when life is bursting with light and 
strength, renewing itself every day in color and 
freshness, that we should sunder ourselves from 
these great sources of power. With all the 
treasures of earth at hand, we coop ourselves in 
narrow causeways where even a sudden knife-edge 
of brightness is a matter for joyful surprise. As 
Stevenson once said, it is all very well to believe 
in immortaUty, but one must first believe in Hfe. 
Why do we grudge ourselves the embraces of '* Our 
brother and good friend the Sun?" 



UP THE WISSAHICKON 

The Soothsayer is a fanatical lover of Fair- 
mount Park. His chief delight is to send his car spin- 
ning along the Lincoln Drive about the time the sun 
drops toward setting; to halt at a certain hostelry 
(if the afternoon be chilly) for what Charles Lamb 
vso winningly describes as ''hot water and its better 
adjuncts"; and then, his stormy soul for the 
moment at armistice with life, to roll in a gentle 
simmer down gracious byways while the Park 



104 UP THE WISSAHICKON 

gathers her mantle of dusk about her. Sometimes 
he halts his curricle in some favorite nook, climbs 
back into the broad, well-cushioned tonneau seat 
and lies there smoking a cigarette and watching 
the lights along the river. The Park is his favorite 
relaxation. He carries its contours and colors and 
sunsets in the spare locker of his brain, and even 
on the most trying day at his office he is a little 
happier because he knows the Wissahickon Drive 
is but a few miles away. Wise Soothsayer! He 
should have been one of the hermits who came 
from Germany with Kelpius in 1694 and lived 
bleakly on the hillsides of that fairest of streams, 
waiting the millennium they expected in 1700. 

The Soothsayer had long been urging me to 
come and help him worship the Wissahickon 
Drive, and when luck and the happy moment con- 
spired I found myself carried swiftly past the 
Washington Monument at the Park entrance and 
along the margin of the twinkhng Schuylkill. At 
first there was nothing of the hermit in the Sooth- 
sayer's conversation. He was bitterly condemning 
the handicraft of a certain garage mechanic who 
had done something to his ^'clutch." He included 
this fallacious artisan in the class of those he 
deems most degraded: The People Who Don't 
Give a Damn. For intellectual convenience, the 
Soothsayer tersely ascribes all ills that befall him 
to Bolshevism. If the waitress is tard}^ in dehver- 
ing his cheese omelet, she is a bolshevixen. If a 
motortruck driver skims his polished fender, he is 



UP THE WISSAHICKON 105 

a bolshevik. In other words, those who Don't 
Give a Damn are bolsheviks. 

The Soothsayer lamented that I had not been 
in the Park with him two weeks ago, when the 
autumn foliage was a blaze of glowing color. But 
to my eye the tints (it was the first of November) 
were unsurpassably lovel3^ It was a keen after- 
noon, the air was sharp, the sky flushing with rose 
and massed w4th great banks of cloud the bluish 
hue of tobacco smoke. When we neared the cor- 
ner of Peter's Island the sun slid from under a 
cloudy screen and transfused the thin bronze- 
3^ellow of the trees with a pale glow which sparkled 
as the few remaining leaves fluttered in the w^ind. 
Most of the leafage had fallen and was being 
])urnt in bonfires at the side of the road, where 
the gusts tossed and flattened the waving flames. 
But the trees were still sufficiently clothed to show 
a rich tapestry of russet and orange and brown, 
sharpened here and there by wisps and shreds of 
yellow. And where the boughs were wholly 
stripped (the silver-gray beeches, for instance) 
their delicate twigs were clearly traced against the 
sky. I think one hears too much of the beauty of 
October's gold and scarlet and not enough of the 
sober, wistful richness of November buffs and duns 
and browns. 

The Wissahickon Drive is the last refuge of the 
foot and the hoof, for motors are not allowed to 
follow the trail up the ravine, which still remains 
a haunt of ancient peace — much more so, indeed. 



106 UP THE WISSAHICKON 

than in former years, when there must have been 
many and many a smart turnout spanking up the 
valley for supper at the Lotus Inn. Over the ruins 
of this hostelry the Soothsayer becomes sadly 
eloquent, recalling how in his salad days he used 
to drive out from town in a chartered hansom and 
sit placidly on a honeysuckled balcony over 
chicken and waffles served with the proper flourish 
by a colored servitor named Pompey. But we 
must take things as we see them, and though my 
conductor rebuked me for thinking the scene so 
lovely — I should have been there not only two 
weeks ago to see the autumn colors, but ten years 
ago to see Pompey and the Lotus Inn — still, I was 
marvelously content with the dusky beauty of the 
glades. The cool air was rich with the damp, 
sweet smell of decaying leaves. A tiny murmur of 
motion rose from the green-brown pools of the 
creek, ruffled here and there with a milky bubble of 
foam below some boulder. In the feathery tops of 
evergreen trees, blackly outlined against the clear 
arch of fading blue, some birds were cheeping a 
lively squabble. We stopped to listen. It was 
plainly an argument, of the kind in which each side 
accuses the other of partisanship. ^'Bolshevism !" 
said the Soothsayer. 

It is wonderfully still in the Wissahickon ravine 
in a pale November twilight. Overhead the sk}^ 
darkened; the sherry-brown trees began to shed 
something of their rich tint. The soft earth of the 
roadway was grateful underfoot to those too accus- 



UP THE WISSAHICKON 107 

tomed to pav(?ment walking. Along the drive 
came the romantic thud of hoofs : a party of girls 
on horseback perhaps returning from tea at Valley 
Green. What a wonderful sound is the quick 
drumming of horses' hoofs! To me it always 
suggests highwaymen and Robert Louis Steven- 
son. We smoked our pipes leaning over the 
wooden fence and looking down at the green 
shimmer of the Wissahickon, seeing how the pallor 
of sandy bottom shone up through the clear water. 

And then, just as one is about to sentimentalize 
upon the beauty of nature and how it shames the 
crass work of man, one comes to what is perhaps 
the loveliest thing along the Wissahickon — the 
Walnut Lane Bridge. Leaping high in air from 
the very domes of the trees, curving in a sheer 
smooth superb span that catches the last western 
light on its concrete flanks, it flashes across the 
darkened valley as nobly as an old Roman viaduct 
of southern France. It is a thrilhng thing, and I 
scrambled up the bank to note down the names of 
the artists who planned it. The tablet is dated 
1906, and bears the names of George S. Webster, 
chief engineer; Henry H. Quimby, assistant engi- 
neer; Reilly & Riddle, contractors. Many poets 
have written verses both good and bad about the 
Wissahickon, but Messrs. Reilly & Riddle have 
spanned it with a poem that will long endure. 

We walked back to the Soothsayer's bolshevized 
car, which waited at the turning of the drive where 
a Revolutionary scuffle took place between Amer- 



108 DARKNESS VISIBLE 

ican troops and a detachment of redcoats under a 
commander of the fine old British name of Kny- 
phausen. As we whirred down to the Lincohi 
Drive and I commented on the lavender haze that 
overhung the steep slopes of the glen, the Sooth- 
sayer said: ''Ah, but you should have seen it two 
weeks ago. The trees were like a cashmere shawl ! " 
I shall have to wait fifty weeks before I can see 
the Wissahickon in a way that will content the 
fastidious Soothsayer. 



DARKNESS VISIBLE 

Of all gifts to earth, the first and greatest was 
darkness. Darkness preceded light, you will re- 
member, in Genesis. Perhaps that is why darkness 
seems to man natural and universal. It requires 
no explanation and no cause. We postulate it. 
Whereas fight, being to our minds merely the 
cleansing vibration that dispels the black, requires 
some origin, some lamp whence to shine. From 
the appaUing torch of the sun down to the pale 
belly of the glowworm we deem light a derivative 
miracle, proceeding from some conceivable source. 
We can conceive darkness without thought of 
light; but we cannot conceive light without dark- 
ness. Day is but an interval between two nights. 
In other words, darkness is a matter which includes 
light just as the conception of a joke includes that 
of humor. One can think (alas!) of jokes without 



DARKNESS VISIBLE 109 

hmnor; but no one can conceive of humor without 
jokes. 

This philosophy, probably scoffable for the 
trained thinker, is a clumsy preface to the thought 
that city streets at night are the most fascinating 
work of man. Like all other handouts of nature, 
man has taken darkness and made it agreeable, 
trimmed and refined and made it acceptable for 
the very nicest people. And the suburbanite who 
finds himself living in town for a week or so is 
likely to spend his whole evenings in wandering 
espial, poring over the glowing caves of shop win- 
dows and rejoicing in the rich patterns of light 
wherewith man has made night lovely. Night by 
herself, naked and primitive and embracing, is em- 
barrassing; she crowds one so; there is so much 
of her. So we push her up the side streets and 
into the movie halls and out to the suburbs, and 
taking her a little at a time we really learn to 
enjoy her company. 

There is a restaurant on Arch street near Ninth 
where one may dine on excellent jam omelet and 
coffee, after which it is good to stroll along Ninth 
street (which with its tributary Ludlow I esteem 
the best street we have) to admire the different 
tints of light that man has set out in order to get 
a look at the darkness. There is the wan white 
glow of the alabaster inverted bowls that are 
favored in barbers' shops. There is the lucent 
gold of jewelers' windows where naked electric 
bulbs of great candlepower are masked in silvered 



110 DARKNESS VISIBLE 

reflectors along the top and bottom of the pane. 
There is the bleak moonshine of tiled and enameled 
restaurants, where they lose much lightness by 
having everything too white. If (for instance) the 
waitresses would only wear scarlet or black dresses, 
how much more brilliant the scene would be. 
There is the pale lilac and lavender of the arcs, 
and the vicious green glare of mercury vapor 
tubes in the ten minute photograph studios that 
are always full of sailors. Over all soars the orange 
disc of the City Hall clock, which has been hailed 
by so many romantic wastrels as the rising or 
setting moon. And the fierce light that is said to 
beat upon a throne is twilight compared to that 
which shimmers round our jewelled soda fountains. 
The long, musty corridor of the postoffice on 
Ninth Street is an interesting place about 8 o'clock 
in the evening. Particularly in these last weeks, 
when movies, saloons and theatres have been 
closed on account of the influenza epidemic, the 
postoffice has become a trysting place for men in 
uniform and young ladies. The gloomy halls at 
each end of the corridor are good ground for gig- 
gling colloquy; light love (curiously) approves the 
dusk. Through the little windows one catches 
ghmpses of tiers of pigeonholes packed with let- 
ters, and wonders what secrets of the variable 
human heart are there confided to the indulgent 
secrecy of Uncle Sam. If a novelist of imaginative 
sympathy might spend a week in reading through 
those pigeonholes, what a book he could make of 



DARKNESS VISIBLE 111 

them! Or could we only peer over the shoulders 
of those who stand writing at the blackened, ink- 
stained desks, what meshes of joy and pain we 
might see raveled in the Hves of plain men and 
women. The great tapestry of human life hes all 
round us, and we have to pluck clumsil}^ at its 
patterns thread by thread. 

One who is interested in bookish matters ought 
to make a point of going upstairs to the registered 
mail room on the second floor. In a corner of that 
room, sitting in a well-worn chair under a drop 
light, you may be fortunate enough to find one of 
the post-office guards, an elderl}^ philosopher who 
beguiles the evening vigil with a pipe and a book. 
He is a genial sage and a keen devour er of print. 
He eats books alive. Marie Corelli and Marion 
Crawford are among his favorites for lighter min- 
istration, but in the past few weeks his mind has 
been on graver matter. He has just finished a life 
of Napoleon and a biography of Joan of Arc. 
Tonight when I went in to register a letter his 
chair was empty (he was having his supper of 
sandwiches and a little bucket of coffee at a table 
in the dim hallway outside) but on the shelf lay 
his book, pipe and tobacco pouch. I could not 
resist peeking to see what the volume was. Little's 
Life of Saint Francis of Assisi. Verily, if our 
government officials are taking to reading of Saint 
Francis, the world looks forward to happier days. 

The Secretary of the Treasury says in a notice 
''Loitering about this building is prohibited," but 



112 DARKNESS VISIBLE 

I fear I have committed what Don Marquis used 
to call lese-McAdoo in often halting to scrutinize 
the bulletin board in the north hall of the post- 
office. Here are posted statements of stores and 
materials needed by the Federal departments. 
One finds such notices as this: Sealed proposals 
will he received by the undersigned until 2 o'clock 
p. m., October 30, for supplying this building with 
three dozen scrubbing brushes. And the Navy 
Yard's bulletin board, near by, alwaj^s has inter- 
esting requirements: Wanted, for United States 
naval training camp, seventy-five bubbling heads 
sanitary drinking fountains. (Imagine how amazed 
seamen of the tarry pigtail era would be at the idea 
of drinking from a sanitary drinking fountain!) 
The Inspector of Engineering Material, U. S. N., 
Cleveland, O., announces that he desires space for 
storing one five-passenger Ford touring car and 
washing it at least once each week for the period 
ending June 30, 1919. It would be a bit incon- 
venient, we think, to store the flivver here in 
Philadelphia. The Navy Yard desires bids for 
supplying submarines with copper-jacketed gas- 
kets, which has a business-like sound. The Public 
Works Department admits that one dozen mouse 
traps, revolving, are needed, to be delivered and 
inspected at Building No. 4, Navy Yard. Wanted 
for overseas vessels (here our heart leaps up at the 
prospect of something exciting) eleven revolving 
office chairs, oak finish, and eleven dozen pencils. 
The Naval Hospital at League Island asks bids on 



DARKNESS VISIBLE 113 

100 poinsettias, 50 cyclamens, 100 primroses, 100 
carnations, 12 hydrangeas, all in pots. And there 
are requisitions posted for wires and shackles, for 
anchors and propellers, for chemicals and talcum 
powder and vast radio towers to be erected at a 
naval base in France. War, you see, is not all a 
matter of powder and shot. If you are ever 
tempted to wonder what the Government does 
with the Liberty Loans, go up to the Federnl 
Building and look over a few of those invitations 
for bids posted on the bulletin boards. 

Ninth street, as I said, often seems to me the 
most alluring street in town. Perhaps it is because 
of certain bookshops; perhaps it is because at a 
table d'hote restaurant above Market street I first 
learned the pleasant combustion of cheap claret 
and cigarettes ignited by the spark of youthful 
converse. To these discoveries of a dozen years 
ago I am happy to add others; for example, that 
the best spaghetti I have ever eaten is served on 
Ninth street; and that there is a second-hand 
bookstore which is open at night. Nor am I likely 
to forget a set-to with sausages and corncakes and 
sirup that I enjoyed on Ninth street the other 
evening with the Soothsayer. We had been mo- 
toring in the suburbs, a crisp and bravely tinted 
October afternoon, and getting back to town after 
8 o'clock as hungry as bolshevik commissars, w^e 
entered into the joy of the flesh in a Ninth street 
hash cathedral. Here and now let me pay tribute 
to those blissful lunch rooms that stay open late at 



114 DARKNESS VISIBLE 



night to sustain and replenish the toiler whose 
business it is to pass along the lonely pavements of 
midnight. Waiters and waitresses of the all-night 
shift, we who are about to eat salute you! Let it 
be a double portion of corned-beef hash and " coffee 
with plenty." And many a midnight luncher has 
blessed you for your unfailing good humor. Is it 
not true, admit it, that most of the happy recol- 
lections of mankind deal with food we have 
enjoyed? 

You will find it well worth while to take a stroll 
up Ninth street some evening. You will usually 
find a roasted chestnut cart at the southeast 
corner of Market street. The noble savor of cook- 
ing chestnuts is alone worth the effort of the walk. 
Then you can pass on northward, by the animal 
shop, where the dogs sleep uneasily in the window, 
agitated by the panorama outside; past the 
cuckoo clock shop and the old Dime Museum. 
As the street leads on to less exalted faubourgs 
you will notice that it grows more luxurious. 
Windows glow with gold watches, diamond studs, 
cut glass carafes. Haberdashers set out S8 silk 
shirts, striped with the rainbow, infinitely more 
glorious than anything to be found on Chestnut 
street. And then, at Race street, you can turn 
off into the queer sights of Chinatown. 



ON THE WAY TO BALTIMORE 115 



' ON THE WAY TO BALTIMORE 

The other day we had occasion to take a B.* 
and O. train down to Baltimore. We had to hurry 
to catch the vehicle at that quaint abandoned 
chateau at Twenty-fourth and Chestnut, and 
when we settled down in the smoker we realized 
that we had embarked with no reading matter but 
a newspaper we had already read. We thought, 
with considerable irritation, that we were going to 
be bored. 

We were never less bored in our life than during 
that two-hour ride. In the first place, the line of 
march of the B. and O. gives one quite a different 
view of the country from the course of the P. R. R., 
with which we are better acquainted. From the 
Pennsy, for instance, Wilmington appears as a 
smoky, shackish and not too comely city. In the 
I eye of the genteel B. and O. it is a quiet suburb, 
with passive shady lawns about a modest station 
where a little old lady with a basket of eggs and 
black-finger gloves got gingerly on board. There 
were a number of colored doughboys in the car, 
just landed in New York and on their way to 
southern homes. '' Oh, boy ! " cried one of these as 
we left Wilmington, ''de nex' stop's Baltimuh, an' 
dat's wheah mah native home at." Every ten 
minutes a fawn-tinted minion from some rearward 
dining car came through with a tray of ice-cream 
cones, and these childlike and amiable darkies 



116 ON THE WAY TO BALTIMORE 

cleaned out his stock every time. They had ail 
evidently just bought new and very narrow-toed 
cordovan shoes in New York; there was hardly 
one who did not have his footgear off to nurse his 
tortured members. The negro soldier has a genius 
for injudicious purchase. We saw some of them 
the other day in a '' pawn-brokers' outlet" on 
Market street laying down their fives and tens for 
the most preposterous gold watches, terrible em- 
bossed and flashy engines of inaccuracy, with 
chains like brass hawsers, obviously about as 
reliable as a sundial at night. 

It was a gray and green day, quite cool — for it 
was still early forenoon — and we looked out on 
vanishing woodlands and bosky valleys with a 
delight too eager to express. Why (we thought) 
should any sane being waste his energy bedeviling 
the Senate when all a hfetime spent in attempting 
to describe the beauty of earth — surely an inno- 
cent ambition — would be insufficient? Statesmen, 
we thought, are but children of a smaller growth; 
and with a superbly evacuated mind we gazed 
upon the meadows and dancing streams near 
Leslie, just over the Maryland border. There 
w^ere glimpses of that most alluring vista known 
to man: a strip of woodland thin enough to let 
through a twinkle of light from the other side. 
What a mystery there is about the edge of a wood, 
as you push through and wonder just what you 
may be coming to. In that corner of Cecil county 
there are many Forest of Arden glimpses, where 



ON THE WAY TO BALTIMORE 117 

the brown and velvety cows grazing in thickets 
seem (as the train flies by) almost like venison. 
There are sw^elling meadows against the sky, white 
with daisies and Queen Anne's lace; the lichened 
gray fences, horses straining at the harrow and 
white farmhouses sitting back among the domes of 
trees. 

Then comes the glorious Susquehanna — that 
noble river that caught the fancy of R. L. S., you 
remember. He once began a poem with the re- 
frain, ''Beside the Susquehanna and along the 
Delaware." Olive-green below the high railway 
bridge, the water tints off to silver in the pale 
summer haze toward Port Deposit. The B. and O. 
bridge strides over an island in midstream, and 
looking down on the tops of the (probably) maples, 
they are a bright j^ellow with some blossom-busi- 
ness of their own. A lonely fisherman was squat- 
ting in a gray and weathered skiff near the bridge. 
What a river to go exploring along! 

It is quaint that men, who love to live in damp 
and viewless hollows, always select the jovial and 
healthy spots to bury themselves in. Just beyond 
the Susquehanna, on the south side of the track, 
we pass a little graveyard in quite the most charm- 
ing spot thereabouts, high on a hill overlooking the 
wide sweep of the river. And then again the green 
rolling ridges of Harford countj^ with, yellow dirt 
roads luring one afoot, and the little brooks scut- 
tling down toward Chesapeake through coverts of 



118 ON THE WAY TO BALTIMORE 

fern and brambles. We remembered the lovely 
verse of the Canadian poet, Charles G. D. Roberts: 

Comes the lure of green things growing, 
Comes the call of waters flowing — 

And the wayfarer desire 
Moves and wakes and would be going. 

What a naughtiness of pagan temptation sings 
to one across that bewitching country ; what illicit 
thoughts of rolltop desks consumed in the bonfire, 
of the warm dust soft under the bootsoles, and the 
bending road that dips into the wood among an 
ambush of pink magnolias. If the train were to 
halt at one of those little stations — say Joppa, near 
the Gunpowder river — there might be one less 
newspaper man in the world. I can see him, drop- 
ping off the train, lighting his pipe in the windless 
shelter of a pile of weather-beaten ties, and setting 
forth up the Gunpowder valley to discover the 
romantic hamlets of Madonna and Trump, lost in 
that green paradise of Maryland June. Or the 
little town of Loreley, on the other side of the 
stream ! Think of the fireflies and the honeysuckle 
on a June evening in the village of Madonna! 
Ah, well, of what avail to imagine these things! 
The train, unluckily, does not stop. 

And Baltimore itself, with its unique and 
leisurely charm, its marvelously individual atmo- 
sphere of well-being and assured loveliness and old 
serenity, how little it realizes how enchanting it is! 
Baltimore ought to pay a special luxury tax for the 



THE PAOLI LOCAL 119 

dark-eyed and almost insolent beauty of its girls, 
who gaze at one with the serene candor of un- 
questioned divinity. But that is a topic that be- 
longs to Baltimore chroniclers, and we may not 
trespass on their privileges. 

At any rate, we got our fishing rod, which is 
what we went for. 



THE PAOLI LOCAL 

It is alwaj^s puzzling to the wayfarer, when he 
has traveled to some sacred spot, to find the local 
denizens going about their concerns as though 
miaware that they are on enchanted ground. It 
used to seem a hideous profanation to the Bae- 
deker-stained tourist from Marsupial City, Ind., 
to step off the train at Stratford and find the 
butcher's cart jogging about with flanks and 
rumps. And even so does it seem odd to me that 
people are getting aboard the Paoli local every 
day, just as though it were the normal thing to 
do instead of (what it really is) an excursion into 
Arcadia. 

Some day a poet will lutanize the Paoli local as 
it ought to be done, in a tender strain — 

Along that green embowered track 
My heart throws off its pedlar^s pack 
In memory commuting hack 

Now swiftly and now slovAy — 
Ah! lucky people, you, in sooth 
Who ride that caravan of youth 
TJie Local to Paoli! 



120 THE PAOLI LOCAL 

The 2:15 train is a good one to take, for it 
affords an interesting opportunity to observe those 
who may be called sub-commuters: the people 
who come in town in the morning, like honest 
working folk, but get back to the country after 
lunch. These, of course, are only half-breed com- 
muters. They are the silver-chevron suburbanites, 
deserving not the true golden stripes of those who 
moil all day. They are teachers, schoolboys, golfo- 
maniacs and damsels from the home of Athene, 
Bryn Mawr. They are mere cherubim and sera- 
phim, not archangels. Stern and grizzled veterans, 
who go home on the Hjw6:05 ('^H" Will not run 
New Year's, Memorial, Independence, Thanksgiv- 
ing and Christmas Days; '' j " will not run Satur- 
days June 7 to Sept. 27, both inclusive; ''w" No 
baggage service) speak of them scornfully as ''Sam 
Brown belt commuters." 

One who was nourished along the line of the 
Paoli local, who knew it long before it became 
electrified with those spider-leg trolleys on its roof 
and before the Wynnewood embankments were 
lined with neat little garages, sometimes has an 
inner pang that it is getting a bit too civihzed. 
And yet no train will ever mean to us what that 
does ! The saying that was good enough for Queen 
Mary and Mr. Browning is good enough for me. 
When I kie, you will find the words PAOLI LOCAL 
indehbled on my heart. When the Corsican pa- 
triot's aicentennial comes along, in 1925, I hope 
there w^l be a grand reunion of all the old travelers 



THE PAOLI LOCAL 121 

along that line. The railroad will run specially 
decorated trains and distribute souvenirs among 
commuters of more than forty years' standing. 
The campus of Haverford College Avill be the 
scene of a mass-meeting. There ^^dll be reminiscent 
addresses by those who recall when the tracks ran 
along Railroad avenue at Haverford and up 
through Preston. An express agent will be bar- 
becued, and there will be dancing and song and 
passing of the mead cup until far into the night. 
The first surprise the Paoli local gives one never 
fails to cause a mild wonder. Just after leaving 
West Philadelphia Station you see William Penn 
looming up away on the right. As you are con- 
vinced that you left him straight behind, and 
have not noticed any curve, the sensation is odd. 
At Fifty-second street rise the shallow green slopes 
of George's Hill, Avith its Total Abstinence foun- 
tain. Nearer the track are wide tracts of vacant 
ground where some small boys of the sort so de- 
lightfully limned by Fontaine Fox have scooped 
mihtary dug-outs, roofed over with cast-off sheets 
lof corrugated iron, very lifelike to see. 
I At Overbrook one gets one's first glimpse of 
those highly civilized suburbs. It is a gloriously 
sunny May afternoon. Three girls are sitting 
under a hedge at the top of the embankment read- 
ing a magazine. The little iron fences, so charac- 
teristic of the Main Line, make their appearance. 
A lady tubed in a tight skirt totters valiantly down 
the road toward the station, and the courteous 



122 THE PAOLI LOCAL 

train waits for her. If the director general of rail- 
roads were a bachelor perhaps he would insert a 
new footnote in his time-tables: ^'Sk," will not 
wait for ladies in hobble skirts. The signal gives 
its blithe little double chirp and we are off again. 

Toward Merion we skirt a brightly sliding little 
brook under willow trees, with glimpses of daintily 
supervised wilderness. It is all so trimly artificed 
that one is surprised to see that the rubbery stalks 
of the dandelion have evaded the lawn-mower just 
as they do in less carefully razored suburbs. 
Honeysuckles sprawl along the embankments, 
privet hedges bound neat gardens. There is a new 
station at Merion. In old bucolic days the Main 
Line station masters lived and kept house in the 
depots, and if one had to wait for a train one could 
make friends with the station master's little girl 
and pet cat. But all those little girls are grown up 
now and are Bryn Mawr alumnse. 

At Narberth one sees clustered roofs embow- 
ered in trees, in the hollow below the railway, and 
a snatch of plowed land. Now one is really in the 
country. Narberth, Wynnewood, Ardmore, Hav- 
erford — so it runs, like a chapter of begats. At 
Wynnewood, if you are sitting on the right, you 
see an alluring vista of a long alley through sun- 
speckled greenery. The baggage agent has nailed 
an old chair seat to a little wooden box which 
provides a meditating throne for such small leisure 
as a Main Line baggage agent gets. Ardmore — 
strange to think that it used to call itself Athens- 



THE PAOLI LOCAL 123 

ville — doesn't quite know whether it is a suburb 
or a city. Clumps of iris look upon busy freight 
yards; back gardens with fluttering Monday linen 
face upon a factory and a gas tank. And then, in 
a flash, one is at Haverford, the goal of pilgrimage. 

Haverford is changed as little as any of the 
suburbs since the days when one knew it by heart. 
Yet Mr. Harbaugh has moved his pharmacy to a 
new building and it can never be quite the same! 
The old stuffed owl sits bravely in the new win- 
dow% but the familiar drug-scented haunt where 
we drank our first soda and bought our first to- 
bacco is empty and forlorn. But the deep butter- 
cup meadow by the Lancaster pike is still broad 
and green, with the same fawn-colored velvety 
cow grazing. 

And there is one thing that they can never 
change: the smell of the Haverford lawns in 
May, when the grass is being mowed. A dazzling 
pervasion of sunlight loiters over those gentle 
slopes, draws up the breath of the grass, blue 
space is rich with its balmy savor. Under the 
arches of the old maples are the white figures of 
the cricketers. In the memorial garden behind 
the library the blue phlox is out in pale masses. 
The archway of the beech hedge looks down on 
the huge prostrate mock-orange tree. Under the 
hemlocks (I hope they're hemlocks) by the obser- 
vatory is that curious soft, dry, bleached grass 
which is so perfect to lie on with a book and not 
read it. And here comes Harry Carter careering 

9 



124 MARKET STREET 

over the lawns with his gasohne mowing machine. 
Everything is the same at heart. And that is why 
it's the perfect pilgrimage, the loveUest spot on 
earth, then, now and forever! 



MARKET STREET 

AS CERTAIN EMINENT TRAVELERS MIGHT HAVE 
DESCRIBED IT 

I. Edgar Allan Poe 

During the whole of a dull and oppressive 
afternoon, when the very buildings that loomed 
about me seemed to lean forward threateningly as 
if to crush me with their stony mass, I had been 
traveling in fitful jerks in a Market street trolley; 
and at length found myself, as the sullen shade of 
evening drew on, within view of the melancholy 
tower of the City Hall. I know not how it was — 
but, with the first glimpse of the building a sense 
of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say 
insufferable, for the feeling was unrelieved by any 
of that half-pleasurable sentiment with which the 
mind usually receives even the sternest images of 
the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the simple 
visages of the policemen on guard in the court- 
yard — upon the throng of suburban humanity 
pressing in mournful agitation toward their 
solemn hour of trial — upon a deserted litter of 
planks left by the heedless hand of the subway 
contractor — and an icy anguish seized upon my 



MARKET STREET 125 

spirit. What was it — I paused to think — what 
was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation 
of the City Hall? Was it the knowledge that any 
one of these bluecoats could, with a mere motion 
of his hand, consign me to some terrible dungeon 
within those iron walls — or the thought that in 
this vast and pitiless pile sat men who held the 
destiny of my fellow citizens in their hands — or 
the knowledge that time was flying and I was in 
imminent peril of missing my train? It was a 
mystery all insoluble, and I mused in shadowy 
fancy, caught in a web of ghastly surmise. 

At last I raised my head, breaking away from 
these unanalyzed forebodings. I gazed upward 
where the last fire of the setting sun tinged the 
summit with a gruesome glow — O horror more 
than mortal ! — fearful sight that drove the blood 
in torrents on my heart — God shield and guard me 
frorn the arch-fiend, I shrieked — had William Penn 
gone Bolshevist? For they had painted the base 
of his statue — a glaring, hloodlike red! 

II. Henry Jambs 
Thorncliff was thinking, as he crossed the, to 
him, intolerably interwoven confusion of Market 
street, that he had never — unless it was once in a 
dream which he strangely associated in memory 
with an overplus of antipasto — never consciously, 
that is, threaded his way through so baffling a 
predicament of traffic, and it was not until halted, 
somewhat summarily, though yet kindly, by a 



126 MARKET STREET 

blue arm which he after some scrutiny assessed as 
belonging to a traffic patrolman, that he bethought 
himself sufficiently to inquire, in a manner a little 
breathless still, though understood at once by the 
kindly envoy of order as the natural mood of one 
inextricably tangled in mind and not yet wholly 
untangled in body, but still intact when the pro- 
pulsive energy of the motortruck had been, by a 
rapid shift of gears and actuating machinery, 
transformed to a rearward movement, where he 
might be and how. 

**This is Market street," said the officer. 

"Market street? Ah, thank you." 

Market street! Could it be, indeed? His last 
conscious impression had been of some shop — a 
milliner's, perhaps? — on, probably. Walnut street 
where he had been gazing with mild reproach at 
the price tickets upon the hats displayed, or, if 
not displayed, a term implying a rather crude con- 
cession to commercialism, at least exhibited, and 
considering whether or not it would be advisable, 
on so hot a day or a day that had every promise 
of becoming hot unless those purple clouds that 
hung over the ferries should liquidate into some- 
thing not unlike a thunder shower, to carry with 
him a small hat as an act of propitiation and re- 
concilement with Mrs. Thorncliff. So this was 
Market street. He gazed with friendly interest into 
the face of the policeman, a gaze in which there 
was not the slightest sign of any animating rebuke 
at the interruption in his meditation, a meditation 



MARKET STREET 127 

which, after all, had been unconscious rather than 
actively cerebrated and with some vague intention 
of inquiring ultimately whether it were safe, now 
and here, to cross the highway or whether it would 
be better to wait until the semaphore (which, as 
he had just noticed, was turned to STOP) gave 
him undoubted privilege to pass unhindered, re- 
marked again, but without malicious motive, 
which indeed would have been foreign to his mood 
and purpose: ''Market street? How interesting." 

III. Walt Whitman 

I SEE the long defile of Market street, 

And the young libertad offering to shine my shoes 

(I do not have my shoes shined, for am I not as 

worthy without them shined? I put it to you, 

Camerado.) 
And I see the maidens and young men flocking 

into the movies. 
And I promulge this doctrine, that the government 

might have imposed twice as heavy a tax on 

amusements, and still young men and maidens 

would throng to the movies, 
(O endless timidity of statesmen) 
And I wonder whether I, too, will go in and give 

the eidolons the once over. 
But putting my hand in my pocket I see that I 

have only thirteen cents 
And it will cost me three cents to get back to 

Camden. 
In a window I see a white-coated savan cooking 

griddle cakes, 
And I think to myself, I am no better than he is, 
And he is no better than I am. 



ns MARKET STREET 

And no one is any better than any one else 

(0 the dignity of labor, 

Particularly the labor that is done by other people ; 

Let other people do the work, is my manifesto, 

Leave me to muse about it) 

Work is a wonderful thing, and a steady job is a 

wonderful thing. 
And the pay envelope is a wonderful institution, 
And I love to meditate on all the work that there 

is to be done, 
And how other people are doing it. 
Reader, whether in Kanada or Konshohocken, 
I strike up for you. 
This is my song for you, and a good song, I'll 

say so. 



IV. Karl Baedeker 
* * * Market Street (Marktstrasse) . Issu- 
ing from the majestic terminus of the Camden 
ferries the traveler will behold the long prospect of 
Market street, ending with the imposing tower 
(548 feet) which was until the recent rise in prices 
the highest thing in Philadelphia. On the summit 
of the tower will be observed the colossal statue of 
WiUiam Penn, said to be of German extraction 
(1644-1718). The Market street is the business 
center of Philadelphia. A curious phenomenon, 
exhibiting the perspicacious shrewdness of the na- 
tives of this great city, may be observed on any 
warm day about noon: the natives keep to the 
shady side of the street. As the thoroughfare runs 
due east and west, a brief astronomical calculation 
will show this to be the southern side of the way. 



TO LEAGUE ISLAND AND BACK U9 

Between October and April, however, it is quite 
safe to walk at a leisurely pace on the sunny side. 
By all means observe the great number of places 
where soft drinks may be obtained, characteristic 
of the American sweet tooth, but expensive (war 
tax, one cent per ten cents or fraction thereof). 
The dignified edifice at the corner of Ninth street 
is the federal building, often carelessly spoken 
of as the postofEce. An entertaining experiment, 
often tried by visitors, is that of mailing a letter 
here. (See note on Albert Sidney Burleson, else- 
where in this edition.) The visitor who wishes 
to make a thorough tour of Market street may 
cover the ground between the river (Delaware, a 
large sluggish stream, inferior to the Rhine) and 
the City Hall in an hour, unless he takes the sub- 
way. (Allow 13/^ hrs.) 



TO LEAGUE ISLAND AND BACK 

Yesterday afternoon the American Press 
Humorists visited League Island. When the party 
boarded a Fifteenth street car I was greatly ex- 
cited to see a lady sitting with a large market 
basket in her lap and placidly reading The Amaz- 
ing Marriage. ''You see," I said to Ted Robin- 
son, the delightful poet from Cleveland, ''we have 
a genuine culture in Philadelphia. Our citizens 
read Meredith on the trolleys as they return from 
shopping." "That's nothing," said Ted, "I al- 
ways read Meredith on the cars at home. I've 



130 TO LEAGUE ISLAND AND BACK 

often read the greater part of a Meredith novel on 
my way to the office in the morning." So perhaps 
the Cleveland transits aren't any more rapid than 
our own. 

The rain came down in whirling silver sheets as 
we crossed the flats toward League Island, but 
after a short wait at the end of the car line the 
downfall slackened. Under the guidance of three 
courteous warrant officers we were piloted about 
the navy yard. 

Notliing is ever so thrilling as a place where 
ships are gathered, and the adventurousness of a 
trip to the navy yard begins as soon as one steps 
off the car and finds great gray hulls almost at 
one's side. It seems odd to see them there, appar- 
ently so far inland, their tall stacks rising up 
among the trees. The Massachusetts and the Iowa 
were the first we passed, and we were all prepared 
to admire them heartily until told by our naval 
convoy that they are "obsolete." Passing by a 
pack of lean destroyers, leashed up like a kennel 
of hounds, we gazed at the gray profile of the 
Nevada, The steep chains perpending from her 
undercut prow we were told were for the use of 
the paravanes, and I think the ladies of the party 
were pleased not to be paravanes. The older 
destroyers — such as the Wainwright — are very 
small compared with the newer models; but it is 
curious that the outmoded types of battleship 
appear to the civilian eye more massive and tower- 
ing than the latest superdreadnoughts. The Ohio, 



TO LEAGUE ISLAND AND BACK 131 

the Connecticut, the New Hampshire, all older 
vessels, loomed out of the water like cliffs of stone ; 
their two and three high funnels out-topping the 
squat single stack of the new oil-burners. 

The word submarine has become a commonplace 
of our daily Ufe, but there is always a tingle of 
excitement on seeing these strange human fishes. 
The 0-16, one of the American undersea craft that 
operated from the Azores base during the war, was 
lying awash at her pier. I would have given much 
to go aboard, but as the officer guiding us said, 
''It pretty nearly takes an act of Congress to get 
a civilian aboard a submarine." 

In a vast dry-dock, Hke small minnows gasping 
for breath in a waterless hollow, lay four diminu- 
tive submarines of the K type. Men were hosing 
them with water, as though to revive them. Their 
red plates made them look absurdly like goldfish; 
the diving rudders, like a fish's tail, and the little 
fins folded pathetically upon their sides toward 
the bow, increased the likeness. Their periscopes 
were stripped off, and through openings in the hull 
workmen were clambering inside. One tried to 
imagine what the interior of these queer craft 
might be Hke. Of all the engines of man they are 
the most mysterious to the layman. Their little 
brass propellers seemed incongruously small to 
drive them through the water. At their noses we 
could see the revolving tubes to hold the four 
torpedoes. 

We passed, alas too fast, the great air-craft 



132 TO LEAGUE ISLAND AND BACK 

factory, with its delicious glimpses of clean and 
delicate carpentry, the steamboxes for bending 
the narrow strips of wood, the sweet smell of 
banana oil which I suppose is used in some var- 
nishing process. A little engine came trundling 
out of a shed, pulling a shining gray fuselage on a 
flat-car. Its graceful lines, its sensitive and shin- 
ing metal work, its sleek, clean body, all were as 
beautiful and tender as the works of a watch. 
Overhead roared an older brother, a flying hydro- 
plane with tremendous sweep of wing, singing that 
deep hum of unbelievable motor power. 

In the recreation hall we stopped for orange 
soda and salted peanuts. Sailors in white ducks 
were playing pool. The sailor soda-tender passed 
out his iced bottles from a huge chest under the 
counter. In the old days of naval tradition one 
doubts whether a sailors' bar would have been a 
place, where a party including ladies and children 
could have tarried with such satisfaction. In the 
Y. M. C. A. building next door marines in their 
coffee-and-milk uniforms were writing letters; a 
band was tuning up some jazz in preparation for 
a theatrical show; a copy of Soldiers Three lay on 
a table. Oilskins lying along the benches gave a 
nautical touch. There was something character- 
istically American about the sharp, humorous, 
nonchalant features of the men. Everywhere one 
saw sturdy, swing-strided marines whose shoulders 
would have thrilled a football coach. 

At one of the wharves along the Delaware side 



TO LEAGUE ISLAND AND BACK 133 

was the new destroyer Tattnall, just taking on her 
equipment — coils of yellow, creaky rope; fenders, 
cases of electric bulbs, galvanized buckets, cases 
of heavy sea boots. It was a tale of adventure 
just to study her lean, crisp, flaring bow with its 
concave curves, her four slender funnels, her tall 
glass-screened bridge, the sternward slant of her 
hull. Even in the mild swell and swing of Dela- 
ware water she rode daintily as a yacht, lifted and 
caressed by the flow and wash of the water. How 
she must leap and sway in the full tumble of open 
seas. She seemed an adorable toy. Who would 
not go to war, with such delicious playthings to 
covet and care for! And beside her on the pier, 
lay a clumsier and grimmer-seeming engine. 
Th-ee great gun-mounts for Admiral Plunkett's 
naval railroad battery, that carried the fourteen- 
inch guns that dropped shells into Metz from 
twonty-eight miles away. On one of these huge 
steel caissons I saw that some member of the 
A. E. F. had scratched his doleful message : George 
W. Moller, a soldier of St. Nazaire, France, who 
wishes to go home toot sweet. 

The lively little tug Betty curtsied up to the 
pier and took us on board. Harry Jones, her 
friendly skipper, steamed us down past the green 
mounds of old Fort Mifflin, past the long tangle 
of Hog Island's shipways and the wet-basins where 
the Scantic, the Pipestone County and other of Hog 
Island's prides were lying, one of them kicking up 
a white smother with her propeller in some engine 



134 TO LEAGUE ISLAND AND BACK 

test. Then we turned upstream. It had been rain- 
ing on and off all afternoon. From the Jersey shore 
came the delicious haunting smell of warm, wet 
pinewoods, of moist tree-trunks and the clean 
whiff of sandy soil and drenched clover fields. 

Our Humorist visitors admitted that they had 
never realized that Philadelphia is a seaport. The 
brave array of shipping as we came up the river 
was an interesting sight. Among several large 
Dutch steamers lying in the stream below Kaighn's 
Point I noticed the Remscheid, which bore on her 
side in large white letters the inscription : 

WAFFENSTILLSTAND — ARMISTICE 

Waffenstillstand is the German for armistice. 
This struck me as particularly significant. Prob- 
ably the cautious Dutch owner of the Remscheid^ 
sending his ship to sea soon after November 11, 
feared there might still be U-boats at large that 
had not learned of the truce and would not respect 
a neutral flag. 

Among other ships we noticed the Edgemoor 
and Westfieldy of Seattle, the four-masted schooner 
Charles S. Stanford of Bangor, the Naimes of Lon- 
don, the Meiningen of Brest, the Perseveranza of 
Trieste, and Iskra of Dubrovnik (which W. M. 
explains to me is the Slavic name for Ragusa). 
Thus, in the names on the sterns along Philadel- 
phia piers one reads echoes of the war. And most 
appealing of all the ships we passed was the little 
white Danish bark Valdivia, just such a craft as 



THE WHITMAN CENTENNIAL 135 

used to be commanded by the best-known sea 
captain of modern years, Joseph Conrad. 

It must be a brave life to be a tugboat skipper. 
To con the Betty up the shining reaches of the 
Delaware in a summer dusk, the soft flow of air 
keeping one's pipe in a glow, that good musk of 
the Jersey pines tingling in the nostril. Then to 
turn over the wheel to the mate while one goes 
below to tackle a tugboat supper, with plenty of 
dripping steak and fried murphies and coffee with 
condensed milk. And a tugboat crew sleep at 
home o' nights, too. Think of it — a sailor all day 
long, and yet sleep in your own bed at home! 



THE WHITMAN CENTENNIAL 
Yesterday — Memorial Day — was a true Walt 
Whitman day. The ferries thronged with cheerful 
people, the laughing, eager throng at the Camden 
terminal, piling aboard trolley cars for a holiday 
outing — the clang and thud of marching bands, 
the flags and flowers and genial human bustle, per- 
vaded now and then by that note of tribute to the 
final mystery — surely all this was just such a scene 
as Walt loved to watch and ponder. And going on 
pilgrimage with two English editors to Mickle 
street and Harleigh Cemetery, it was not strange 
that our thoughts were largely with the man whose 
hundredth birthday we bear in mind today. 

By just so far (it seems to me) as we find it 
painful to read Walt Whitman, by just so far we 



136 THE WHITMAN CENTENNIAL 

may reckon our divergence from the right path of 
human happiness. If it perturbs us to read his 
jottings of "specimen days" along Timber creek, 
wresthng with his twelve-foot oak sapling to gain 
strength, sluicing in clear water and scouring his 
naked limbs with his favorite flesh-brush, rumi- 
nating in blest solitude among the tints of sunset^ 
the odor of mint-leaves and the moving airs of the 
summer meadow — if this gives us a twinge, then 
it is probably because we have divorced ourselves 
from the primitive joyfulness of the open air. If 
we find his trumpetings of physical candor shame- 
ful or unsavory, perhaps it is because we have 
not schooled our thoughts to honest cleanliness. 
(Though Anne Gilchrist's gentle comment must 
not be forgotten: ''Perhaps Walt Whitman has 
forgotten the truth that our instincts are beautiful 
facts of nature, as well as our bodies; and that 
we have a strong instinct of silence about some 
things.") If we find him lacking in humor or think 
some of his catalogues tedious — there are cata- 
logues and shortage of humor even in some books 
considered sacred. And Whitman, if not a humor- 
ist himself, has been (as Mr. Chesterton would 
say) the cause of humor in others. How adorably 
he has lent himself to parody! But this by the 
way. The point is. Whitman is a true teacher: 
first the thrashing, then the tenderness. No one 
ever found him exhilarating on the first reading. 
But he is a hound of heaven. He will hunt you 
down and find you out. Expurgate him for your- 



THE WHITMAN CENTENNIAL 137 

self, if you wish. He cannot be inclosed in a 
formula. He asks you to draw up your own 
formula as you read him. Rest assured, WiUiam 
Blake would not have found him obscure. ^' If you 
want me again, look for me under your bootsoles." 
Is not that the very accent of Blake? 

There is marvelous drama in Camden for the 
seeing eye. The first scene is Mickle street, that 
dingy, smoke-swept lane of mean houses. The 
visitors from oversea stood almost aghast when 
they saw the pathetic vista. For years they had 
dwelt on Whitman's magnificent messages of pride 
and confidence: 

See, projected through time, 
For me an audience interminable. 

Perhaps they had conjured to mind a clean little 
cottage such as an English suburb might offer: a 
dainty patch of wallflowers under the front door, 
a shining brass knocker, a sideboard of mahogany 
with an etching of Walt on the wall. No wonder, 
then, that the deathplaceof the poet with ''audi- 
ence interminable" came as a shock. 

And yet, one wonders, is not that faded box, 
with its flag hanging from the second story and 
little Louis Skymer's boyish sign in the window — 
Rabbits for sale cheap — and the backyard littered 
with hutches and the old nose-broken carved bust 
of Walt chucked away in a corner — is it not in a 
way strangely appropriate? Would not Walt al- 
most have preferred it to be so, with its humble 



138 THE WHITMAN CENTENNIAL 

homeliness, so instinct with humanity, rather than 
a neatly tidied mausoleum? If Walt had believed 
that a man must live in a colonial cot in a fashion- 
able suburb in order to write great poetry he would 
not have been Walt. 

The great matter is to reveal and outpour the Godlike 
suggestions pressing for birth in the soul. 

And then it must be remembered that Walt 
didn't live much on Mickle street until he became 
a confirmed invaUd, and his pack of listeners kept 
him talking so hard he didn't know where he was. 
He lived on the ferries, up and down Chestnut 
street, or (for that matter) in the constellation 
Orion. 

The second scene of the Camden drama is at 
Harleigh Cemetery. Here, among that sweet city 
of the dead, in a little dell where the rhododen- 
drons yield their fragrance to the sun-heavy air, 
the massive stone door stands ajar. A great mass 
of flowers, laid there by the English-Speaking 
Union, was heaped at the sill. More instinctively 
than in many a church, the passer lifts his hat. 

Has any one supposed it lucky to be born? 
I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, 
and I know it. 

I thought of what a little girl who was standing 
on the pavement of Mickle street had said to me 
as we halted in front of the Whitman house. "My 
father was sick, and he died." 

Yesterday — Memorial Day — was a day of poig- 



nant thoughts. Walt wrote once in ''Specimen 
Days": 

Somehow I got thinking today of young men's deaths — 
not at all sadly or sentimentally, but gravely, realistically, 
perhaps a little artistically. 

What a curious note of apology there is in the 
last admission! He who was so rarely ''artistic"! 
He who began his career as a writer of incredibly 
mawkish short stories and doggerels, and rigidly 
trained himself to omit the "stock" touches! Let 
us not try to speak of Walt, or of death, in any 
"artistic" vein. 

"Stop this day and night with me" (Walt said) 
"and you shall possess the origin of all poems." 
By which he meant, of course, you shall possess 
your own soul. You shall grasp with sureness and 
ecstasy the only fact you can cling to in this 
baffling merry-go-round — the dignity and worth of 
your own life. In reading Whitman one seems to 
burst through the crust of perversity, artificial 
complexity and needless timidity that afflicts us 
all, to meet a strong river of sanity and courage 
that sweeps away the petty rubbish. Because it is 
so far from the course of our meaningless gestures, 
we know instinctively it is right and true. There 
is no heart so bruised, there is no life so needlessly 
perplexed, but it can find its message in this man. 
"I have the best of time and space," he said. So 
have we all, for our Httle moment. Read his de- 
fiant words, great and scornful as any ever penned : 

lO 



140 THE WHITMAN CENTENNIAL 

What place is besieged, and vainly tries to raise the siege? 
Lo, I send to that place a commander, swift, brave, im- 
mortal. 
And with him horse and foot, and parks of artillery. 
And artillerymen, the deadliest that ever fired gun. 

He sends you your own soul. 

As we rode back to Camden on the trolley one 
of my companions spied the Washington statue in 
front of the courthouse (which I had been hoping 
he would miss). He smiled at the General grotes- 
quely kneeling in stone. " Only giving one knee to 
his Maker," was his droll comment. 

It was so with Walt. He wanted to be quite j 
sure what he was kneeUng to before he gave both 
knees. 

Perhaps the most curious (and gruesome) story 
in connection with Whitman comes to me from 
James Shields. He has showed me a monograph 
by the late Dr. E. A. Spitzka, professor of anatomy 
at the Jefferson Medical College, which gives a 
brief review of scientific post-mortem measure- 
ments made of the brains of 130 notable men and 
four women. In this monograph, reprinted by 
the American Philosophical Society in 1907, 
occurs the following paragraph: 

87. WHITMAN, WALT, American poet. The weight 
of Walt Whitman's brain is variously given as 45.2 ounces 
(1282 grams) and 43.3 ounces (1228 grams). His stature 
was six feet and in health he weighed about 200 pounds. 
The brain had been preserved, but some careless attendant 
in the laboratory let the jar fall to the ground; it is not 
stated whether the brain was totally destroyed bj'^ the fall, 
but it is a great pity that not even the fragments of the brain 
were rescued. 



ANNE GILCHRIST'S HOUSE 141 



ANNE GILCHRIST'S HOUSE 
The Kensington car that goes northward on 
Seventh street carries one straightway into a land 
of adventure. Hardly have you settled in your 
seat when you see a sign, The Pickwick Cafe, 53 
North Seventh street. Admirable name for a chop- 
house! Glancing about, across the aisle is a lady 
with one of those curious hats which permit the 
wearer to scrutinize through the transparent brim 
while her head is apparently bent demurely down- 
ward. The surprising effect of impaling oneself 
upon so unexpected a gaze is starthng. Bashfully 
one turns elsewhere. On a hoarding stares a 
theatrical sign: '^Did You Tell Your Wife ALL 
Before Marriage?" 

I got off at Master street and walked stolidly 
west. It is a humble causeway in that region, rich 
in j unk shops and a bit shaky in its speUing. At the 
corner of Warnock is an impromptu negro church, 
announcing ^'Servers every Sunday, 3 p. m." 
The lithograph which is such a favorite on South 
street, crops up again: the famous golden-haired 
lassie with a blue dress, asleep under a red blanket, 
guarded by a white dog with a noble, steadfast 
expression. Fawn and Camac streets reappear and 
afford quiet vistas of red brick with marble trim- 
mings. I believe this is Fawn's first venture north 
of Bainbridge. As its name implies, a shy, furtive 
street. One could spend a lively day afoot tracing 



142 ANNE GILCHRIST^S HOUSE 

the skip-stops of these two vagabonds. Camac 
street has tried to concentrate attention on itself 
between Walnut and Spruce, calling itself arro- 
gantly the Greatest Little Street in the World. 
But it leads a multiple life. I have found it pop- 
ping up around Race street, at Wallace, and even 
north of that most poetically named of all Phila- 
delphia's thoroughfares. Rising Sun avenue. 

The greenery of Ontario Park is likely to lure 
the wayfarer from Master street for a detour. 
There is a large pubUc school there, and an ex- 
ceedingly pretty young teacher in a pink dress and 
shell spectacles was gravely leading a procession of 
thirty small urchins for their morning recess in the 
open air. Two by two, with decent gravity, they 
crossed the street, and demobihzed in the park for 
hair ribbons, shoelaces and blouse strings to be 
retied. 

As it approaches Broad street, Master goes 
steadily up grade, both physically and in the spirit. 
At the corner of Broad it reaches its grand historic 
climax in the vast ornate brown pile where Edwin 
Forrest died in 1872. A tablet says, ''This house 
was the residence of Edwin Forrest, the greatest 
tragedian of his time." It is interesting to remem- 
ber (with the aid of an encyclopedia) that one of 
Forrest's favorite roles was Spartacus. Until the 
arrival of Liebknecht he was supreme in that ac- 
complishment. 

At the top of the hill, at Fifteenth street, Master 
street becomes almost suburban and frisky. It 



ANNE GILCHRIST'S HOUSE 143 

abounds in gracious garden vistas, rubber plants 
and an apartment house of a Spanish tinge of 
architecture. A patriotic Presbyterian church has 
turned its front lawn into a potato patch. At 1534 
one of the smallest and most dehghtful black pup- 
pies ever seen was tumbling about on a white 
marble stoop. He was so young that his eyes were 
still blue and cloudy, but his appeal for a caress 
was unmistakable. I stopped to pay my respects, 
but a large Airedale appeared and stood over him 
with an air of ''You haven't been introduced." 

A few blocks further on one abuts upon Ridge 
avenue, the Sam Brown belt of Philadelphia. In 
its long diagonal course from Ninth and Vine up 
to Strawberry Mansion, Ridge avenue is full of 
unceasing hfe and interest. It and South street 
are perhaps the two most entertaining of the city's 
humbler highways. Master street crosses it at a 
dramatic spot. There is a great cool lumber yard, 
where the piled-up wood exhales a fragrant breath 
under the hot sun, and lilac-breasted pigeons flap 
about among the stained rafters. A few yards 
away one catches a glimpse of the vast inclosure 
of Girard College, where the big silvery-gray Par- 
thenon rises austerely above a cloud of foliage. 

One aspect of Ridge avenue is plain at a glance. 
It is the city's stronghold of the horse. You will 
see more horses there than anywhere else I know 
(except perhaps down by the docks). From horse- 
shoeing forges comes the mellow clang of beaten 
iron. As the noon whistles blow, scores of horses 



144 ANNE GILCHRIST'S HOUSE 

stand at their wagons along the curb, cheerfully 
chewing oats, while their drivers are dispatching 
heavy mugs of ''coffee with plenty" in the nearby 
delicatessens. Ridge avenue conducts a heavy 
trade in furniture on the pavements. Its favorite 
tobaccos are of a thundering potency: Blue Hen, 
Sensation, Polar Bear, Buckingham cut plug. 
There is a primitive robust quaUty about its mer- 
chandising. ''Eat Cornell's Sauer Kraut and 
Grow Fat," says a legend painted aross the flank 
of a pickle factory. "Packey McFarland Recom- 
mends Make-Man Tablets," is the message of a! 
lively cardboard "cutout" in a druggist's window. 
Odd little streets run off the avenue at obUque 
angles : Sharswood, for instance, where two horses 
stood under the shade of a big tree as in a barnyard 
picture. On a brick wall on Beechwood street I 
found the following chalked up: 

Clan of the Eagle's Eye 
Lone Wolf 
Red Hawk 
Arrow fire 
Red Thunder 
Deerfoot 

This seemed a pathetic testimony that not even 
the city streets can quench the Fenimore Cooper 
tradition among American youth. And, oddly 
enough, below this roster of braves some learned 
infant had written in Greek letters, "Harry a dam 
fool." Evidently some challenge to a rival tribe. 



ANNE GILCHRIST'S HOUSE 145 



Twenty-second street north of Ridge avenue is 
a quiet stretch of red brick, with occasional out- 
croppings of pale yellow-green stone. At the noon 
hour it is a cascade of children, tumbling out of 
the Joseph Singerly Pubhc School. Happily for 
those juveniles, there is one of the best tuck shops 
in Philadelphia at the corner of Columbia avenue. 
It is worth a long journey to taste their cinnamon 
buns. And in the block just behind the school, at 
1929 North Twenty-second, there is a little three- 
story yellow-green house with a large bay window, 
which gives Whitman lovers a thrill. That little 
house is associated with one of the most poignant 
and curious romances in the story of American 
letters. For it was here that Mrs. Anne Gilchrist 
and her children came in September, 1876, and 
lived until the spring of 1878. Mrs. Gilchrist, a 
noble and talented English woman, whose hus- 
band had died in 1861, fell passionately in love 
with Walt after reading '' Leaves of Grass." Her 
letters to Walt, which were pubhshed recently by 
Thomas Harned, are among the most searchingly 
beautiful expressions of human attachment. After 
Whitman's paralytic stroke Anne Gilchrist in- 
sisted on coming from London to Philadelphia to 
be near the poet and help him in any way she 
could; and to this little house on Twenty-second 
street Walt used to go day after day to take tea 
with her and her children. Walt had tried earn- 
estly to dissuade her from coming to America, 
and his few letters to her seem a curiously enig- 



146 ANNE GILCHRIST'S HOUSE 

matic reply to her devotion. Perhaps, as Mr. 
Harned imphes, his heart was engaged elsewhere. 
At any rate, his conduct in this dehcate affair 
seems sufficient proof of what has sometimes been 
doubted, that he was at heart a gentleman — a 
banal word, but we have no other. 

The present occupant of the house is Mrs. Alex- 
ander Wellner, who was kind enough to grant me a 
few minutes' talk. She has Hved in the house only 
a year, and did not know of its Whitman associa- 
tion. The street can hardly have changed much — 
save for the new pubhc school building — since 
Centennial days. The gardens behind the houses 
are a mass of green shrubbery, and in a neighboring 
yard stands an immense tree in full leaf. Perhaps 
Walt and his good friends may have sat out there 
for tea on warm afternoons forty-two years ago. 
But it seems a long way from Camden! 

As I came away, thinking of that romantic and 
sad episode in the lives of two who were greatly 
worthy of each other, the corner of my eye was 
caught by a large poster. In a random flash of 
vision I misread it in accordance with my thoughts. 
THE GOOD GRAY POET, it seemed to say. 
For an instant I accepted this as natural. Then, 
returning to my senses, I retraced my steps to 
look at it again. THAT GOOD GULF GASO- 
LINE! 



ALONG THE GREEN NESHAMINY 147 



ALONG THE GREEN NESHAMINY 
There are scenes so rich in color, so flooded 
with sunlight, that the hand hardly knows how to 
set them down. They seem to yearn for expression 
in what is called poetry, yet one fears to submit 
them to the bending and twisting of rhyme. For 
when one embarks on the ecstatic search for words 
in tune with one another he may find bright and 
jovial cadences, but rarely does he say just what 
was in his heart. How, then, may one order the 
mysterious mechanism that gears brain with fore- 
finger so that the least possible color and contour 
be lost in transmission? 

The other day I rowed up Neshaminy Creek. 
It is a bright little river seventeen miles or so from 
Philadelphia, a stripling of the great-hearted Dela- 
ware. Its wooded and meaded banks are a favored 
pleasuring ground for pavement-keeping souls, 
who set up a tent there in the summertime and 
cruise those innocent waters in canoes. It is a 
happy stream, beloved of picnic parties. Millions 
of hard-boiled eggs and ice cream cones have per- 
ished in the grove above the dam, and a long 
avenue of stately poplar trees has grown up to 
commemorate them. The picnicking point is 
known as Neshaminy Falls, though the falHng is 
done mostly by high-spirited flappers on the enter- 
taining toboggan chute, down which they launch 
themselves in a cheering line. The river falls 



148 ALONG THE GREEN NESHAMINY 

tamely enough over a small dam; Niagara's 
prestige is nowhere menaced. 

There is a kind of emergency fleet corporation 
doing a bustling traffic at the little plank landing 
stage. The chief navigating officer was toting a 
roll of bills larger than I can face with comfort. 
From him one hires a vessel of sorts, propelled by 
bright red oars, and then one sets forth up the 
stream. Most of the voyagers are content after 
passing the island, for the current, though slug- 
gish, is persistent. But it is well to keep on. 
Neshaminy shows her rarest charms to those who 
woo her stoutly. 

Above the island there is a long strip of thick 
woodland on both banks. The treetops, rising 
steeply into the bright air, keep tossing and 
trembhng in the wind, but the stream itself is 
entirely still. Along the bank, where the great 
bleached trunks chmb out of the water, there 
hangs the peculiar moist, earthy, pungent smell 
of a river that runs among woods. Every fresh- 
water bather must know that smell. It has in it 
a dim taint as of decay, a sense of rotting vegeta- 
tion. Yet it is a clean odor and a cool one. It is 
a smell particularly dear to me, for it recalls to 
my eager nostril the exact scent of the old bathing 
place on the Cherwell at Oxford, quaintly known 
as Parson's Pleasure. How vividly I remember 
that moist, cool corner of turf, the afternoon sun- 
light stabbing it with slanting arrows of gold, the 
enigmatic old Walt Whitman (called Cox) handing 



ALONG THE GREEN NESHAMINY 149 

out damp towels from his dingy hutch, and the 
clean white bodies poised against green willows! 
Would it hurt Neshaminy's feehngs if I were to 
confess that the poignance of its appeal to me was 
partly due to its kinship with the Oxford Cher? 

A little farther up, the creek has the good sense 
to throw off its mantle of woods. Wide meadows 
come to the water's edge; hills of a friendly sort 
are folded down about it, showing a bare line of 
upland against the sky. A clean line of hill against 
the emptiness of blue is a sight that never tires. 
A country road crosses the stream on a flimsy 
bridge that leans on stout old stone piers. The 
road bends away uphill, among a wilderness of 
blackberry bushes, winding among pastures where 
the cows are grazing. That is a good kind of road ; 
the sort of road one associates with bare feet and 
hot dust sifting between boyish toes. 

Above this bridge the creek shallows. Through 
the clear water one sees the bottom humped with 
brown stones. Many of the larger boulders bear a 
little white paint stain on their upward ridges, 
showing where a venturesome excursionist has 
bumped one of the transports of the emergency 
fleet corporation. Dragonflies gleam like winged 
scarf pins. Under the boat flashes the bright shape 
of a small perch or sunfish. On the willow trunks 
that lean along the bank an occasional fisherman 
is watching his float. The current moves faster 
here, dimpling and twisting in little swirls. The 
water shines and glows: it seems to have caught 



150 ALONG THE GREEN NESHAMINY 

whole acres of living sunlight. Far above a great 
hawk is lazily slanting and sHding, watching 
curiously to see the mail plane from Bustleton 
that passes up the valley every afternoon. 

There is no peace like that of a little river, and 
here it is at its best. 

At last we reached the point where, if the boat 
is to go further, it must be propelled by hand, the 
pilot walking barefoot in the stream. Easing her 
round sharp reefs, pushing through swift little 
passages where the current spurts deeply between 
larger stones, she may be pushed up to a huge tree 
trunk lying along the shore, surrounded by the 
deliciously soft and fluid mud loved by country 
urchins, the mud that schloops when one with- 
draws the sunken foot. Here, the world reduced 
to *'a green thought in a green shade," one may 
watch the waterbirds tiptoeing and teetering over 
the shallows, catch the tune of the little rapids 
scuffling round the bend and eat whatever sand- 
wiches are vouchsafed by the Lady of the White 
Hand. High above treetops and framing the view 
stands the enormous viaduct of the Trenton cut- 
off. A heavy freight train thundering over it now 
and then keeps one in touch with the straining 
world. 

In the swift sparkle that bickers round the bend 
one may get a dip and a sprawl in the fashion 
that is in favor with those who love the scour of 
lightly running water over the naked flesh. That 
corner of the stream is remote and screened. There 



ALONG THE GREEN NESHAMINY 151 

is a little gap between two shouldery stones where 
the creek pours itself chuckling and vehement. 
The bottom is grown with soft, spongy grasses 
that are very pleasant to squat upon. I presume 
that every man in the world takes any opportunity 
he can to wallow in a running brook. It is an old 
tradition, and there cannot be too much of it. 

The little rivers are excellent friends of man. 
They are brisk, cheerful and full of quiet corners 
of sun. They are clear and clean, the terror of 
dark unknown waters is not in them. I have 
known and loved many such, and I hope to make 
friends with more. When I look back and reckon 
up the matters that are cause for regret there will 
not stand among them my private and pagan 
sluice in the bright water of Neshaminy. 



152 PENN TREATY PARK 



PENN TREATY PARK 

Down by the wharf in old Peiin Treaty Park 

The trees are all a canopy of green — 

The staunch policeboat Stokley, ancient craft, 

Is purring with a gentle push of steam 

That whispers in her valves. Along the pier 

The water clucks and sags. Two river cops 

Sit smoking pipes outside their small caboose, 

Above them looms a tragic rusty bow, 

The Roald Amundsen, Norwegian tanker, 

She that caught fire last winter at Point Breeze 

While loading oil. The river cops will tell you 

How all the Schuylkill was a hell of flame 

And ten men lost their lives. The good old Stokley 

Dredged the river afterward for bodies. 

At sunset time in old Penn Treaty Park 
The children sprawl and play: the tawny light 
Pours through the leafy chinks in sifted gold 
And turns the middle-stream to level fire. 
Then, after that red sunset comes the dusk. 
The little park is steeped in living shadow, 
And Cupid pairs the benches by the pier. 
But there's one girl who always sits alone. 
Coming at dark, she passes by the shaft 
That marks the treaty ground of William Penn. 
Too dusk for reading, yet how well she knows 
The words carved in the stone: Unbroken Faith. 

Mary, of Wildey street, had met Alf Larsen 
Up at a picture show on East Girard. 
Her father was a hard one: he said fiercely 
No girl of his should run around with sailors, 



PENN TREATY PARK 153 

No girl of his should play with bolsheviks. 
Alf was Norwegian, and a decent fellow, 
A big blond youngster with a quiet eye; 
He loved the girl, but old man Morton swore 
All Scandinavians were the same as Russians, 
And every Russian was a bolshevik. 

Mary was stubborn; all her blood was willful; 
At twihght, by the old Penn Treaty stone. 
She used to wait for Alf, or he for her. 
And in some whim of Celtic flame and fancy 
The carven words became her heart's own motto, 
And there they pledged their love: Unbroken 
Faith. 

Oh, golden evenings there along the river! 

When all the tiny park was Eden land — 
Oh eager hearts that burn and leap and shiver, 

Oh hand that mates with hand! 
And they would cross the Shackamaxon ferry, 

Or walk by Cramps' to see the dry-docked ships 
Or in a darkened movie house make merry 

With sudden lips on lips — 

And half their talk was tremulous with yearning. 

And half was of their future, shrewdly planned — 
How Alf would leave the sea, and soon be earning 

Not less than thirty in a job on land; 
Between their kisses they would talk of saving. 

Between their calculations, kiss again, 
And she would say that he must be behaving 

While she described a house to rent at ten. 

With Alf at sea, the girl would still go down 
To see the very bench where they had sat, 
The tidy Stokley moored beside the pier, 



154 PENN TREATY PARK 

The friendly vista of the Camden shore, 

The stone where they had locked their hearts in 

one. 
So time went by. The armistice came on, 
And Mary radiant, for her lad no more 
Would run the gauntlet of the submarines, 
And he had heard a chance to get a job 
As watchman up at Cramps. Just one more voy- 
age 
He planned; then he would quit and they'd begin. 
So, late one night, in the familiar park 
They said good-by. It was their last good-by, 
As Mary said: his ship was due to sail 
Day after next, and he would have no chance 
To come again. She turned beside the stone 
To fix in view that place of happy tryst. 
The quiet leafless park with powdered frost. 
The lamps of the pohceboat, red and green. 

The Roald Amundsen was Larsen's ship. 

She lay at the refinery, Point Breeze, 

Taking on oil for Liverpool. The day 

She was to sail, somehow she caught on fire. 

A petaled rose of hell, she roared in flame — 

The burning liquid overflowed her decks. 

The dock and oil-scummed river blazing, too. 

Her men had little chance. They leaped for Ufe 

Into the river, but the paraffin 

Blazing along the surface, hemmed them in. 

They either burned or drowned, and Alf was one. 

The irony of fate has little heed 

For tenderness of hearts. The blistered hulk. 

Burnt, sunk and raised, with twisted, blackened! 

plates, 
A gaunt and gutted horror, seared and charred, 



PENN TREATY PARK 155 

Was towed upstream, and, to be sold for junk, 
Was moored beside the Stokley. Where her bow, 
All scarred and singed with flame and red with 

rust. 
Must almost overhang the very bench 
Of love and happy dreams, the Roald lay. 
And Mary, coming down to that old haunt 
Where all her bliss and heartbreak were most near, 
Found the dead ship, approached, and read the 

name. 

Well, such a tale one cannot tell in full; 
Heart's inmost anguish is the heart's alone. 
But night by night the girl is sitting there. 
Watching the profile of that ship of death, 
Watching the Stokley, and the kindly men 
Who fought the fire and grappled in the ooze 
And did not find the thing she hoped and feared. 
And still her only consolation lies 
In those two words cut on the trysting stone, 
U7ibroken Faith. Her faith unbroken still 
She sits in shadow near their meeting place: 
She will not fail him, should he ever come. 
She watches all the children at their play, 
And does not fear to dream what might have been, 
And half believes, beneath the summer leaves, 
To see, across the narrow strip of park. 
His ruddy face, blond head and quiet eyes. 
Yet not until the kindly dusk has come 
And fills the little park with blue that heals 
Does she go down. She cannot bear to see 
The sunset sheet the river o'er with flame. 



156 THE INDIAN POLE 



THE INDIAN POLE 

Every street has a soul of its own. Somewhere 
in its course it will betray its secret ideals and pref- 
erences. I like to imagine that the soul of Callow- 
hill street has something to do with beer. Like a 
battered citizen who has fallen upon doleful days, 
Callowhill street solaces itself with the amber. 

Between Tenth and Fourth streets Callowhill 
numbers at least a dozen pubs, not to enumerate 
a score of ''cider saloons." A soft breath of hops 
seems to haunt the air, and the trucks unloading 
kegs into cellars give promise of quenchers to 
come. Generally one may meet along those pave- 
ments certain rusty brothers who have obviously 
submitted themselves to the tramplings of the 
brewer's great horses, as Homer Rodeheaver's an- 
them puts it. 

Callowhill street, like so much of Philadelphia's 
old and gentle beauty, is in a downward pang, at 
any rate so far as the picturesque is concerned. It 
is curious to see those comely old dwellings, with 
their fluted dormer windows, their marble facings 
and dusty fanlights, standing in faded dignity and 
wistfulness among factories, breweries and rail- 
road spurs. Down their narrow side alleys one 
may catch a glimpse of greenery (generally the ail- 
anthus, that slummish tree that haunts city back 
yards and seems to have such an affinity for red 
brick) . If one has a taste for poking and exploring, 



THE INDIAN POLE 157 

he will find many a little court or cul de sac where 
hardly a stone or a window has changed for a hun- 
dred years. One does not need to travel abroad to 
find red walls with all the mellow stain that one 
associates with Tudor manors. There is an old 
wagon yard on the north side of Callowhill, near 
Fifth, where an artist might trance himself with 
the plain lines of old houses, the clear sunlight 
falling athwart the flattened archway and the 
decrepit vehicles with their weary wheels. 

It is a perpetual delight to wander in such by- 
ways, speculating on the beauty of those rows of 
houses in days gone by. What a poetry there is in 
the names of our streets — Nectarine, Buttonwood, 
Appletree, Darien, Orianna! Even the pawn- 
brokers are romantics. There is a three-ball estab- 
lishment on Ninth street where the uncle keeps a 
great rookery of pigeons in his back yard. They 
coo seductively to embarrassed wanderers. I can 
hardly keep my watch in my pocket when I hear 
their soft suggestions. What a city of sober dig- 
nity and clean comfort Philadelphia must have 
been in the forties — say when Mr. and Mrs. James 
Russell Lowell came to the northeast corner of 
Fourth and Arch on their honeymoon, in 1845. 
''My cheeks are grown so preposterously red," 
wrote Lowell, "that I look as if I had rubbed them 
against all the brick walls in the city." 

As I turned off Callowhill street, at the oblique 
junction of York avenue, leaving behind the 
castellated turrets of a huge brewery, I came upon 



158 THE INDIAN POLE 

an interesting sight. Where Wood street cuts 
York avenue and Fourth street there stands a tall 
white flagpole, surmounted by an enormous 
weather-vane representing an Indian with bow and 
quiver, holding one arm outstretched. At its foot 
stands an iron drinking fountain of the S. P. C. A., 
dated 1868, and on the other side another water 
basin (now dry) with a white marble slab behind 
it. I thought that this might offer some inscrip- 
tion, but it is pasted over with a dodger commend- 
ing '^The coolest theatre in town." The Indian 
figure engaged my curiosity and I made for a near- 
by tobacconist to inquire. (I always find to- 
bacconists genial people to supply information.) 
He referred me to Mr. William Renner, the maker 
of flags and awnings round the corner at 403 Vine 
street, and from Mr. Renner I learned many things 
of interest. 

Startling pleasures accrue to the wanderer who 
starts upon his rambles in total ignorance of what 
he is going to find. Let me frankly confess that I 
know^ nothing of the history and topography of 
Philadelphia; I am learning it as I go. Therefore 
when I discover things they give me the vivid de- 
light of a totally fresh experience. The Indian 
Pole, as it is called, may be an old story to many 
citizens; to me it was entirely new. 

Mr. Renner, who has taken the landmark under 
his personal protection, tells me that the weather- 
vane was erected many years ago to commemorate 
the last Indian ''powwow" held in Philadelphia, 



THE INDIAN POLE 159 

and also that it is supposed to have been a starting 
place for the New York stage coaches. However 
that may be, at any rate the original pole was re- 
placed or repaired in 1835, and at that time a sheet 
of lead (now kept by the Historical Society) was 
placed at the top of the pole bearing the names of 
those who had been instrumental in the restora- 
tion. The work was done at the expense of the 
'^ United States" Fire Engine Company, that 
being the day of the old volunteer fire depart- 
ments. 

Apparently the Indian Pole became a kind of 
rallying point for rival fire engine companies, and 
there was much jealous competition, when steam 
fire apparatus was introduced, to see which com- 
panj^ could first project a stream of water over the 
top of the staff. This rivalry was often accom- 
panied by serious brawls, for Mr. Renner tells me 
that when the Indian figure was repaired recently 
it was found to be riddled with bullet holes. This 
neighborhood has been the scene of some dan- 
gerous fighting, for St. Augustine's Church, which 
was destroyed in the riots of 1844, stands only a 
few yards away down Fourth street. 

In 1894 the pole again became dangerous, not as 
a brawling point, but on account of age. It was 
removed by the city, but at the instance of Mr. 
Howard B. French, of Samuel H. French & Com- 
pany, the paint manufacturers on Callowhill 
street, the Indian figure and the ball on which it 
revolved were kept and a new pole was erected by 



160 THE INDIAN POLE 

Mr. French and four other merchants of the neigh- 
borhood, T. Morris Perot, Edward H. Ogden, John | 
C. Croxton and William Renner (the father of the 
present Mr. Renner). That pole, which is still 
standing, is eighty-five feet from ground to truck. 
The Indian figure is nine and one-half feet high; 
it stretches nine feet from the rear end of the bow 
to the outstretched hand. The copper ball be- 
neath it is sixteen inches in diameter. Mr. Renner 
says the figure is of wood, several inches thick, and 
sheathed in iron. He thinks that the hand alone 
would weigh 150 pounds. He thinks it quite re- 
markable that though many church steeples in the 
neighborhood have been struck by Hghtning the 
Indian has been unscathed. On holidays Mr. 
Renner runs up a large flag on the pole, twenty- I 
one by thirty-six feet. j 

When I remarked that this was a pretty big flag 
I touched Mr. Renner in a tender spot. Probably 
there is no man who knows more about big flags 
than he, for he told me that in 1911 he had made | 
in his workroom on Vine street a Stars and Stripes |, 
which is supposed to be the largest flag ever j 
made. It measured 75 by 150 feet. It was flown 
in Chestnut Hill Park that summer and the next 
year was hung in a park in Bridgeport, Conn. It 
was hung on a wire cable between two masts, 
each 125 feet high and 780 feet apart. Mr. Renner 
was to have taken it to Panama to be exhibited 
there when the canal was opened, but unfortu- 
nately it was damaged in a fire in Bridgeport. 



THE INDIAN POLE 161 

What has become of it since he does not know. 
The flag was made of standard wool bunting and 
weighed half a ton. It was sold for S2500. 

We are not thought to be very sentimental 
about our flag, but Mr. Renner tells me that a few 
years ago, when he was hoisting a very large flag 
at Chestnut Hill Park, he had an amusing experi- 
ence which sounds more Parisian than Philadel- 
phian. He had been sitting in a ''bosun's chair" 
at the top of the staff while the flag was pulled up 
and his face was black with soot from the smoke 
of the nearby scenic railway. Descending from the 
pole he was leaning against a pavilion looking up 
at the flag, when an old lady who had been watch- 
ing rushed up, threw her arms round his neck and 
embraced him. Mr. Renner still blushes modestly 
when he recalls the ordeal. 

It is a pleasant thing for any community to have 
some relic or trophy of its own that fosters local 
pride. Those who hve in the neighborhood of 
Fourth and Callowhill streets are proud of the 
Indian Pole, which the city once consigned to the 
dump heap, but which they rescued and have 
cherished as an interesting landmark. And there 
are other matters thereabout to invite imagina- 
tion : The bright blue laboratory of a certain dan- 
druff nostrum; inns named ''The Tiger " and " The 
Sorrel Horse," and a very curious flatiron-shaped 
house that stands just behind the flagstaff. 

I thought the Indian Pole was quite an adven- 
ture for one morning, but at Fifth and Arch I met 



162 CLAUD JOSEPH WARLOW 

another. Passing the grave of Ben and Deborah 
Frankhn I noticed that it was being swept. 

*'Do you do that every day?" I asked the sex- 
ton. 

*' Every day," he said. '^ I like to keep it clean." 
I think that Deborah, who was a good house- 
wife, would be glad to know that her plain Quaker- 
ish tombstone is dusted every day. The good man 
who does it is Jacob Schweiger and he lives at 221 
Noble street. 



CLAUD JOSEPH WARLOW 

Some days ago we were passing the new office of 
the Philadelphia Electric Company at Tenth and 
Chestnut streets, when our eye was caught, 
through the broad plate-glass windows, by a 
shimmer of blue at the back of the store. Being of 
a curious disposition, we pushed through the re- 
volving doors to investigate. 

On the rear wall of the office we found a beau- 
tiful painting representing Philadelphia seen from 
above in the twilight of a snowy winter evening. 
It is a large canvas, about twenty-five feet long by 
ten high. Now we are totally unfamiliar with the 
technical jargon adopted by those who talk about 
art; we could not even obey the advice given to us 
by an artist friend, always to turn a picture upside 
down and look at it that way before passing judg- 
ment; but this painting seemed to us a mighty fine 
piece of work. 



CLAUD JOSEPH WARLOW 163 

As we said, it shows the city as seen from some 
imaginary bird's-eye vantage, perhaps somewhere 
above the Girard Avenue Bridge. The bending 
course of the Schuylkill is shown in a ribbon of 
deep blue; the broader and paler stretch of the 
Delaware closes the canvas to the east; the whole 
city from Cramps' shipyard down to Hog Island 
lies under the gaze, with the brilliance of the even- 
ing lights shining up through the soft blue dusk. 
The prevailing tone of the painting is blue; but 
examined closely the white of snow-covered roofs 
and the golden glow of street lights sparkling up- 
ward from the channels of the city, together with 
the varied tints of the masonry, lend a delightful 
exuberance of color, though always kept within the 
restrained and shadowy soberness of a winter twi- 
light. 

This painting seemed to us so remarkable an 
achievement that we were immediately interested 
and made some inquiries to find out who had done 
it. The story is interesting, as any story of 
achievement is, and it also has a touch of poignant 
tragedy. 

In the bitter snowy days of the winter of 1917-18 
— and there is no Philadelphian who does not re- 
member what that winter was like — a young artist 
of this city spent the daylight of almost every 
snowy day out on the streets with his paint box. He 
climbed to the top of high buildings, he haunted the 
Schuylkill bridges with his sketchbook, and with 
numbed fingers he sat on ice-crusted cornices or 



164 CLAUD JOSEPH WARLOW 

leaned from giddy office window-sills noting down 
colors, contours and the aspect of the city from 
various viewpoints. Time and again watchmen 
and policemen took him to the station house as a 
suspected spy until his errand was explained to the 
city authorities and he was given an authoritative 
passport. But his passion for painting snow scenes 
and his desire to crown handicapped years of study 
by a really first-rate canvas spurred him on. He 
had spent the previous summer in getting the 
topography of the city by heart, mapping the 
course of various streets until he knew them house 
by house. Then, when the bitterest winter in our 
history came along, the snow that bothered most 
of us was just what he had yearned for. He rev- 
elled in the serene sparkling colors of the winter 
twilight when blazing windows cast their radiance 
across the milky whiteness and the sky shimmers i 
a clear gem-like emerald and blue and mother-of- | 
pearl. 

Even those who know the city through a long 
lifetime of street wandering will admit the diffi- 
culty of representing the vast area as it would be 
seen from an imaginary gazing-point high in air. 
Infinite problems of perspective, infinite details of 
accuracy and patient verification must enter into 
such a work. But the artist never wavered through 
his long task. The sketches he had made through 
that long blizzard winter were gradually put on his 
big canvas through the hot days of last summer. 
Undoubtedly it was a happy task, working on that 



CLAUD JOSEPH WARLOW 165 

broad snowscape in the hot drowsy weather, with 
the growing certainty that he was doing some- 
thing that measured up to his dream of portraying 
the city he loved, picturing it with the accurate 
fidelity of a map and yet with the loving e3^e of an 
artist who lingers over the beauty that most of us 
only intuitively suspect. The painting was fin- 
ished early in the autumn and the ambitious young 
artist looked forward eagerly to the triumphant 
day when it would be hung in the new office of the 
Electric Company, which had encouraged the 
work and made it possible. 

Then came the influenza epidemic, and the 
artist was among the first to be carried off by that 
tragic pestilence. He died without seeing his paint- 
ing put up in the place of honor it now occupies. 
In his modesty he did not even put his name on 
the canvas — or at least if he did it is written so 
minutely that one hunts for it in vain. 

It is good to know that the Philadelphia Electric 
Company is going to erect a bronze tablet in his 
memory beside the splendid painting on which he 
worked for a year and a half. 

The name of the artist was Claud Joseph War- 
low, well remembered at the Academy of the Fine 
Arts as one of its most promising pupils in recent 
years. He was born in Williamstown, Pa., March 
31, 1888, and died in this city October 6, 1918. 
His skill as an artist was apparent even as a boy; 
chalk drawings that he made on the blackboard at 
school were so good that they were allowed to re- 



166 CLAUD JOSEPH WARLOW 

main on the board for months after he had done 
them as an incentive to other children. After leav- 
ing school he started a sign-painting business, 
sketching in oils in his spare time. Owing to his 
father's death, about 1906, he had to postpone for 
some years his ambition to enter the Academy 
classes, finally attaining that desire in 1911. At 
the Academy he was awarded several prizes, 
notably the Cresson traveling fellowship, which 
he was not able to enjoy on account of the war. 
We hope that all lovers of Philadelphia will take 
occasion to step into the office of the Electric Com- 
pany to see this beautiful painting. There are no 
words competent to express the tragedy of those 
who have worked patiently for an ideal and yet 
die too soon to see their dreams come to full fruit. 
Yet it is good to remember that those pinched and 
bitter days of last winter, when we were all be- 
moaning Black Mondays and ways clogged with 
snow, gave Claud Warlow his opportunity to put 
on canvas the beauty that haunted him and 
which made his life a triumph. And a civilization 
that is wise enough to beautify an electrical office 
with so fine a mural canvas, that builds railroad 
stations like Greek temples, puts one of the world's 
finest organs in a department store and a painting 
of mosaic glass in a pubHshing plant, is a civiliza- 
tion that brings endless hope to birth. 



AT THE MINT 167 



AT THE MINT 

I don't know just why it was, but all the time I 
was in the Mint yesterday I kept on thinking 
about Lenine and Trotsky and how much they 
would have liked to be there. 

I found my friend, the assistant assayer, in his 
laboratory making mysterious chalk marks on a 
long blackboard and gazing with keen gray eyes 
at a circle of httle bottles containing pale bluish 
fluids. At the bottom of each vessel was a white 
sediment that looked like a mixture of cream 
cheese and headache powder. ''Silver," said the 
assistant assayer, in an offhand way, and I was 
duly impressed. 

You may expect to be impressed when you visit 
the Mint on Spring Garden street. Most of us 
know, in a vague way, that two-thirds of our coin- 
age comes from that dignified building, wliich is 
probably the finest mint building in the world. 
Fewer of us know that most of South America's 
coins come from there too, and when the citizens 
of Lima or Buenos Aires pay out their bright 
centavos for a movie show or a black cigar their 
pockets jingle with small change stamped in Phila- 
delphia. And none of us can realize, without a 
trip to that marvelous home of wonders, the spirit 
of devoted and delicate science that moves among 
the men who have spent self-effacing lives in test- 



168 AT THE MINT . 

ing precious metals and molding them into the 
most beautiful coinage known on earth. 

The assistant assayer, after a last lingering look 
at his little blue flasks — he was testing the amount 
of silver in deposits of ore brought in to the Mint 
from all over the country — if you find any in your 
back yard the Mint will pay you a dollar an ounce 
for it — was gracious enough to give me some fleet- 
ing glances at the fascinating work going on in the 
building. The first thing one realizes is the pres- 
ence of the benign and silent goddess of Science. 
Those upper floors, where the assayers work in 
large, quiet chambers, are like the workrooms of 
some great university, some university happily ex- 
empt from the turbulent and irritating presence of 
students, where the professors are able to lose 
themselves in the worship of their own researches. 
Great delicate scales — only you mustn't call them 
''scales," but ''balances" — that tremble like a 
lover's heart if you lay a hair on one platform, 
shelter their gossamer workings behind glass cases. 
My guide showed me one, a fantastic delicacy so 
sensitive that one feels as clumsy as Gibraltar 
when one looks at it. Each division on its ivory 
register indicates one-tenth of a milligram, which, 
I should say, is about as heavy as the eyelash of a 
flea. With a pair of calipers he dropped a tiny 
morsel of paper on one balance and the needle 
swung over to the extreme end of the scale. With 
his eyes shining with enthusiasm he showed how, 
by means of a counterpoise made of a platinum 



AT THE MINT 169 

wire as slender as a mosquito's leg, he could swing 
the needle back toward the middle of the scale and 
get the exact reading. 

At another balance a scientist was snipping 
shreds from a long ribbon of gold. I was allowed 
to hold it in my hand, and though its curator ex- 
plained deprecatingly that it was only 999.5 thou- 
sandths pure, it seemed pure enough for all my 
purposes. It is wonderful stuff, soft enough to 
tie in knots and yet so tough that it is very 
difficult to cut with heavy shears. That strip of 
about sixty ounces was worth well over S1200 — 
and they didn't even search me when I left the 
building. "Proof gold," it seems, which is 1000 
pure, is worth $40 an ounce, and all the proof gold 
used for scientific purposes in this country is re- 
fined in the Philadelphia Mint. The assistant 
assayer showed me lots of nice little nuggets of 
it in a drawer. Almost every drawer he opened 
contained enough roots of evil to make a news- 
paperman happy for a year. 

In a neat little row of furnaces set into a tiled 
wall I was shown some queer little cups heating to 
1700 degrees in a rosy swirl of fire. These little 
'^ cupels," as they call them, are made of com- 
pressed bone-ash and are used to absorb the baser 
metals in an alloy. Their peculiar merit is that at 
the required temperature they absorb all the 
copper, lead or whatever other base metal there 
may be and leave in the cup only the gold and 
silver. Then the gold and silver mixture is placed 



170 AT THE MINT 

in boiling nitric acid, which takes out all the silver 
and leaves only the globule of pure gold. The 
matter that puzzles the lay observer is, how do 
you find these things out in the first place? But I 
would believe anything after one marvel my friend 
showed me. He picked up a glass that looked like 
an innocent tumbler of spring water. ''This," he 
said, "is nitrate of silver; in other words, dis- 
solved silver. Don't spill it on your clothes or it 
will eat them right off your back." I kept off, 
aghast. Into the tumbler he dropped a little mu- 
riatic acid. The mixture boiled and fumed and 
long streamers of soft, cheesy substance began to 
hasten toward the bottom of the glass, waving like 
trees in a gale. ''That's the silver," he said, and 
while I was still tremulous showed me wafers of 
gold dissolving in aqua regia. When completely 
dissolved the liquid looks like a thin but very 
sweet molasses. He then performed similar magic 
upon some silver solution by unloading a pipette of 
salt water on it and shaking it in a little machine 
called an "agitator." After which he felt I was 
sufficiently humble to show me the furnace 
room. 

If you have an affection for the nice old silver 
cartwheel dollars, keep away from the furnace 
room of the Mint, for one of the first things you 
will see is whole truckloads of them moving silently 
to their doom. I was told that there is a shortage 
of silver in Europe these days, particularly since 
troubles in Mexico have reduced that country's 



AT THEpIINT 171 

output of ore, and in order to accommodate for- 
eign friends Uncle Sam has recently melted 200,- 
000,000 of our old friends into bars and 50,000,000 
more of them are on the way to the furnace. None 
have been coined since 1904, as apparently they 
are not popular. 

The pride of the Mint centers just now upon the 
two new electric furnaces, the larger of which has 
only been installed a few weeks (a Swedish inven- 
tion, by the way), but the old gas ovens are more 
spectacular to the visitor because the flames are 
more visible. When the heavy door is slid aside 
you can see the crucible (made of graphite from 
Ceylon) with its mass of silver dollars, standing 
patiently in the furious glow. Then, if you are 
lucky, you will see them ladling out the liquid 
silver into the molds. One of the workmen held a 
slip of paper to the boiling metal: it burst into 
flame and he calmly lit his pipe with it. In other 
furnaces sheets of nickel from which Argentine 
coins had been punched were being melted, sur- 
rounded by a marvelous radiance of green and 
golden fire. All about you are great ingots of cop- 
per, silver, nickel and boxes of queer little nickel 
nuggets, formed by dropping the hot liquid into 
ice water. It is a place in which one would will- 
ingly spend a whole day watching the wonders 
which those accustomed to them take so calmly. 
In the vault just outside the furnace room I was 
shown between eighteen and nineteen million dol- 
lars' worth of gold bars stacked up on shelves. 



172 AT THE MINT 

Again — I don't know just why — I thought of 
Lenine and Trotsky. 

There were also more truckloads of the old silver 
dollars on their way to the fire. Some of them, 
though dated back in the seventies, seemed as 
good as new; others were badly worn. They were 
piled up in lots of 40,000, which, when new, would 
weigh 34,375 ounces; one lot, I was told, had lost 
208 ounces through abrasion. 

In the big coining room the presses were busily 
at work stamping out new coins, and women op- 
erators were carefully examining the ''blanks'' for 
imperfections before they go under the dies. To 
one who expected to see vast quantities of shining 
new American coinage it was odd to learn that 
almost all the machines were busy turning out 
small change for Peru and Argentina. Next week, 
the foreman said, they start on a big order of the 
queer coins of Siam, which have a hole in the 
middle like the Chinese money. But I saw one 
machine busy turning out Lincoln pennies at the 
rate of 100 a minute. The one-cent piece requires 
a pressure of forty tons to stamp the design on the 
metal; the larger coins, of course, need a heavier 
pressure, up to 120 tons. 

The Mint's wonderful collection of coins and 
medals of all lands would deserve an article of its 
own. One of the rarities of which the curator is 
most proud is a terra-cotta medallion of Franklin, 
made by Nini at Chaumont in 1777. It is in per- 
fect condition and was bought by the Mint from a 



AT THE MINT 173 

New York newspaperman. A brand-new acquisi- 
tion, only set up within the last few weeks, is a 
case of French military decorations presented by 
the French Government — the five grades of the 
Legion of Honor, the four grades of the Croix de 
Guerre and the Medaille Militaire. Near these are 
the United States military and naval medals, a 
sad and ugly contrast to the delicate art of the 
French trophies. 

I was unfortunate in not being lucky enough to 
meet Superintendent Joyce, under whose adminis- 
tration the Philadelphia Mint has become the 
most remarkable place of coinage in the world; or 
Mr. Eckfeldt, the assayer in chief, who has served 
the Mint for fifty-four years and is the son of the 
former assayer and grandson of the Mint's first 
*' coiner," Adam Eckfeldt. These three genera- 
tions of Eckfeldts have served the Mint for 123 
years. But my friend Mr. Homer L. Pound, the 
assistant assayer, who modestly speaks of his own 
thirty years of service as a mere trifle, had by this 
time shown me so much that my brain reeled. He 
permitted me to change my pocket money into 
brand new coinage of 1919 as a souvenir, and then 
I left. And as for Lenine and Trotsky, the experi- 
ence would have killed them! 



174 STONEHOUSE LANE AND THE NECK 



STONEHOUSE LANE AND THE NECK 

It had been a very hot daj^ At seven o'clock 
the rich orange sunshine was still flooding straight 
down Chestnut street. The thought occurred to 
me that it would be a splendid evening to see the 
sunset over the level fens of The Neck, that curi- 
ous canal-country of South Philadelphia which so 
few of us know. 

You take the Fourth street car to Fifth and 
Ritner. The wide space of Mifflin Square is full 
of playing children. Here you halt to light a pipe. 
This is advisable, as you will see in a moment. A 
couple of blocks south brings you to one of the 
most noxious areas of dump heaps and waste lit- 
ters in the world. An expanse of evil-smelling 
junk smokes with a thin haze of burning. Queer 
little wooden shacks, stables, pig pens, sit com- 
fortably in a desert of tin cans and sour rubbish. 
You will need your tobacco if you are squeamish. 
In the shadow of mountains of outcast scrap are 
tiny homes under dusty shade, where a patient old 
lady was sitting in a wheel chair reading a book. 

A winding track, inconceivably sordid, leads 
through fields of rank burdock, ashes, broken 
brick, rusty barrel hoops. Two ancient horses 
were grazing there, and there seemed a certain 
pathos in a white van I encountered at the cross- 
ing where Stonehouse lane goes over the freight 



STONEHOUSE LANE AND THE NECK 175 

tracks. The Brown Company, it said, Removers of 
Dead Animals. 

But once across the railway you step into a new 
world, a country undreamed of by the uptown citi- 
zen. Green meadows lie under the pink sunset 
light. One-story white houses, very small, but 
with yards swept clean and neat whitewashed 
fences, stand under poplars and willows. It is 
almost an incredible experience to come upon that 
odd little village as one crosses a wooden bridge 
and sees boys fishing hopefully in a stagnant canal. 
At the bend in the lane is a trim white house with 
vivid flowers in the garden, beds patterned with 
whited shells, an old figurehead — or is it a cigar- 
store sign? — of a colored boy in a blue coat, 
freshly painted in the yard. It is like a country 
hamlet, full of dogs, hens, ducks and children. In 
the stable yards horses stand munching at the 
barn doors. Some of the little houses are painted 
red, brown and green. A girl in a faded blue pina- 
fore comes up the road leading two white horses, 
a solitary cow trails along behind. 

Like every country village, Stonehouse lane has 
its own grocery store, a fascinating little place 
where one can sit on the porch and drink a bottle 
of lemon soda. This tiny shop is stuffed with all 
manner of provisioning; it has one of the old-fash- 
ioned coffee grinders with two enormous fly- 
wheels. In the dusk, when the two oil lamps are 
lit and turned low on account of the heat, it shines 
with a fine tawny light that would speak to the eye 



176 STONEHOUSE LANE AND THE NECK 

of a painter. A lamplighter comes along kindling 
the gas burners, which twinkle down the long 
white lane. A rich essence of pig steeps in the air, 
but it is not unpalatable to one accustomed to the 
country. As one sits on the porch of the store 
friendly dogs nose about one, and the village chil- 
dren come with baskets to do the evening pur- 
chasing. 

A map of the city gives one little help in explor- 
ing this odd region of The Neck. According to the 
map one might believe that it is all laid out and 
built up in rectilinear streets. As a matter of fact 
it is a spread of meadows, marshes and scummy 
canals, with winding lanes and paths stepping off 
among clumps of trees and quaint white cottages 
half hidden among rushes, lilies and honeysuckle 
matting. Off to the east rise the masts and wire- 
less aerials of League Island. It is a strange land, 
with customs of its own, not to be discerned at 
sight. Like all small communities sharply con- 
scious of their own identity, it is proud and re- 
served. It is a native American settlement: the 
children are flaxen and sturdy, their skin gilded 
with that amazing richness and beauty of color 
that comes to small urchins who play all day long 
in the sun in scant garmenting. 

Over another railway siding one passes into the 
fens proper, and away from the village of Stone- 
house lane. (I wonder, by the way, what was the 
stone house which gave it the name? All the pre- 
sent cottages are plainly wood.) Now one is in a 



STONEHOUSE LANE AND THE NECK 177 

country almost Dutch in aspect. It is seamed 
with canals and was probably an island originally, 
for it is still spoken of as Greenwich Island. Along 
the canals are paths, white and dusty in the sum- 
mer drought, very soft to walk upon. Great 
clumps of thick old willows stand up against the 
low^ horizon. The hght grows less steep as the sun 
sinks in a powdery haze of rose and orange. In 
one of the canals, below a high embankment, half 
a dozen naked boys were bathing, attended by a 
joyous white dog. In that evening pinkness of 
light their bodies gleamed beautifully. Through 
masses of flowering sumac, past thick copses and 
masses of reeds, over broad fields of bird-song, 
narrow paths lead down to the river. In the warm 
savor of summer air it all seemed as deserted and 
refreshing as some Adirondack pasture. Then one 
stands at the top of a little sandy bank and sees 
the great bend of the Delaware. Opposite is the 
mouth of Timber Creek, Walt Whitman's favorite 
pleasure haunt. A little lower down is League 
Island. 

One of the most fascinating dreams one could 
have is of all this broad fen-land as a great city 
playground. It is strange that Philadelphia has 
made so little use of the Delaware for purposes of 
pubhc beauty. A landscape architect would go 
mad with joy if given the deHghtful task of plan- 
ning The Neck as a park. It would take com- 
paratively little effort to drain it properly and 
make it one of the noblest pleasure grounds in the 



178 VALLEY FORGE 

world. Will this wonderful strip of river-bank be 
allowed to pass into slime and smoke as the lower 
Schuylkill has done? 

The stream lap-laps against a narrow shelf of 
sandy beach, where there are a number of logs for 
comfortable sitting. A water rat ran quietly up 
the bank as I slid down it. A steamer passed up 
the river, her windows aflame with the last of the 
sunlight. Birds were merry in the scrub willows, 
and big dragon flies flittering about. The light 
grew softer and grayer, while a concave moon 
swung high over the water. Motorboats chugged 
gently by, while a big dredge further upstream 
continued to clang and grind. By and by the 
river was empty. It had been a very hot day, and 
a great idea occurred to me. In the gooii old 
brownish water of the Delaware I had what my 
friend Mifflin McGill used to call a ^'surreptious" 
swim. 

VALLEY FORGE 
A CURIOUS magic moves in the air of Valley 
Forge. There is the same subtle plucking at heart 
and nerves that one feels when coming home from 
abroad, passing up some salty harbor on a ship, he 
sees his own flag rippling from a home staff. It is 
a sudden inner vision of the meaning of America. 
It is a realization of the continuity of history, a 
sense of the imperishable quality of human virtue. 
And today, when this nation stands on the sill of a 
new era, ready to surrender for the sake of human- 



VALLEY FORGE 179 



ity some of the proud traditions ingrained by 
years of bitter struggle, what place could be a more 
fitting haunt of dreams and nursery of imagina- 
tion? Here, on these wind-swept slopes where now 
the summer air carries the sweetness of fresh-cut 
hay, here in this vale of humiliation men met the 
arrows of despair. There is an old belief that it is 
the second summer that is the danger time in a 
baby's life. It was the second winter that was the 
cradle-crisis of the young republic — the winter of 
1777-78. It was then that began the long road 
that carries us from Valley Forge to Versailles. 

Few of us realize, I think, what a vast national 
shrine Valley Forge has become under the careful 
hands of a few devoted people. There is little of 
winter and dearth in that spreading park as one 
views it on a July afternoon. In the great valley 
of the Schuylkill green acres of young corn ripple 
in the breeze. Sunlight and shadow drift across 
the hillsides as great rafts of cloud swim down un- 
seen channels of the wind. There is no country in 
America lovelier than those quiet hills and vales of 
Montgomery and Chester counties, with their 
shadowed creeks, their plump orchards and old 
stone farmhouses. My idea of jovial destiny 
would be to be turned loose (about the beginning 
of the scrapple season) somewhere in the neighbor- 
hood of the King of Prussia — no one but an idiot 
will ever call him by his new name of Ye Old King! 
— with a knapsack of tobacco, a knobby stick and 
a volume of R. L. S. 



180 VALLEY FORGE 

Coming down the road from Devon, the first 
thing one sees is the great equestrian statue of 
Anthony Wayne on its pink pedestal. It stands on 
a naked ridge, which was formerly groved with 
fine oaks. The Caliph who had me in charge told 
me with blood in his eye that the trees had been 
slaughtered in order to give a wider view of the 
statue. It seems a serious pity. Beyond this one 
comes to the National Arch, designed by Paul 
Cret, of the University of Pennsylvania, who has 
since so gallantly served his native France on fields 
of battle far more terrible than Valley Forge. 
From this arch, with its fine inscription by Henry 
Armitt Brown, there is a serene view across yellow 
fields of stubble where a big hay wagon was piled 
high with its fragrant load. 

Mr. Weikel, the friendly guard on duty at this 
spot, a Civil War veteran, was kind enough to 
show us the hut which is his headquarters. It is 
one of the many scattered through the park, rep- 
licas of the original soldiers' huts, built of logs and 
chinked with clay. With its little smoke-stained 
fireplace and weathered roof, sitting on that hill- 
top in the sweet quick air, it seemed a pleasant 
place for meditation. Over the rough-hewn mantel 
was an old picture of George Washington and a 
badge belonging to some member of the American 
Press Humorists, dropped by one of these mad 
wags on their recent visit to the park. 

But the chief glory of Valley Forge is the Wash- 
ington Memorial Chapel, a place so startling in its 



VALLEY FORGE 181 

beauty that it takes the breath away. Through 
a humble arched door — as lowly as the doorway of 
suffering through which the nation came to birth — 
one enters a shrine of color where the history of the 
republic is carved in stone. The tall windows 
blaze with blue and scarlet. A silk Stars and 
Stripes, hanging by the stone pulpit, waves gently 
in the cool wind that draws up from the valley and 
through the open door. The archway into the 
cloister frames a glimpse of green. In every detail 
this marvelous little Westminster Abbey of Amer- 
ica shows the devoted thought of Dr. Herbert 
Burk, the man who has lavished his heart upon 
this noble symbol of our national life. With his 
brown eyes glowing with enthusiasm he will ex- 
plain how the religion, the romance, the pathos 
and humor of a century and a half are woven into 
every line and tint of the fabric. The magnificent 
stained windows — windows that recall nothing less 
fine than the most splendid cathedrals of the mid- 
dle ages — were planned by Doctor Burk and exe- 
cuted by Nicola D'Ascenzo. The marvelous oak 
carvings of the choir stalls and pews, the carved 
lead lamps, the organ, all were done here in Phila- 
delphia. 

This amazing poem in stone, endless in lovingly 
elaborated beauty, can no more be described than 
any great poem can be described. It is as perfect, 
as unique, as '^The Eve of Saint Agnes"; as rich 
in color and as thrilling in meaning. On these hill- 
sides, where men "tramped the snow to coral," 



182 VALLEY FORGE 

hungry, shivering and unshod; where a great art- 
ist, wanting to paint the commander-in-chief, had 
to do it on bedticking; and where this same com- 
mander, worshiper as well as warrior, stole from 
the campfire to pray; on this field of doubt and 
suffering there has risen this monument of religious 
art, devised as a focus of patriotic inspiration for 
the whole republic. It is an altar of national wor- 
ship, as though expressly conceived to give out- 
ward shape to the words uttered only j^esterdaj^ 
by another commander-in-chief: 

The stage is set, the destiny disclosed. It has come 
about by no plan of our conceiving, but by the hand of 
God, who led us into this way. We cannot turn back. ^Ye 
can only go forward, with lifted eyes and freshened spirit, 
to follow the vision. It was of this that we dreamed at our 
birth. 

Of the dreams of America's birth the Washing- 
ton Memorial Chapel is the noble and fitting 
symbol. It is both a thanksgiving and a prophecy . 

From no other lips than those of Doctor Burk 
himself can the storj^ of this place be told. He will 
tell 3^ou how the chapel grew out of humility and 
discouragement. He will show you the plain little 
wooden chapel which he built first of all, before 
money could be raised for the present building. He 
will show you the gargoyle — the Imp of Valley 
Forge — which he says is emblematic of the spirit of 
the place because he can smile even in winter when 
his mouth is full of ice. The chapel goes back to 
the truest tradition of medieval art, when so much 
humor was carved into the stone ornaments of 



VALLEY FORGE 183 

cathedrals. When the cornerstone was laid in 1903 
Doctor Burk had only enough money on hand to 
pay for two loads of stone; he had only a piece of 
hemlock board to shelter the copper box that con- 
tained the relics to be inclosed in the foundations, 
and after the ceremony had to smuggle the box 
back to his home for safe-keeping. Standing in the 
beautiful little cloister where the open-air pulpit 
looks out into the woodland cathedral (with 
Mount Vernon elms planted in the form of a cross), 
he says: '^If the park were left alone it would be 
merely a picnic ground. It's the most spiritual 
spot in America: we must maintain its spiritual 
heritage." 

It is one of the rector's regrets that only one 
President has ever visited Valley Forge. As one 
stands in the open-air pulpit looking out through 
the grove of elms and over the blue and green 
valley, one wishes that Mr. Wilson might visit the 
spot. There is no place in America of such peculiar 
significance just now, there would be no man so 
quick as Mr. Wilson to catch its spiritual echoes. 
Even the humblest of us hears secret whispers in 
the rustle of those trees. 



184 THE MERCANTILE LIBRARY 



THE MERCANTILE LIBRARY 

There is a legend of an old booklover who was 
pasturing among his folios one evening by candle 
light. Perhaps he sat (as Charles Lamb used to) 
with a tumbler of mild grog at his elbow. Perhaps 
he was in that curious hypnotic trance induced by 
utter silence, long reading and insufficient air. In 
the musty fragrance of his library the tapers cast 
their mellow gush of gold about him, burning up 
the oxygen from under his very nose. At any rate, 
in a shadowy alcove something stirred. A book- 
worm peeped out from a tall vellum binding. It 
flapped its wings and crew with a clear lively note. 
Startled, the aged bibliophile looked up and just 
glimpsed the vanishing flutter of its wings. It was 
only a ghmpse, but it was enough. He ran to his 
shelves, his ancient heart pounding like an anvil 
chorus. The old promise had come true. For if 
any man shall live to see a bookworm, all the 
volumes on his shelves immediately turn to first 
editions, signed by the author. But the joyous 
spasm was too much for the poor scholar. The 
next morning he was found lying palsied at the foot 
of his bookcase. The fact that at least two fingers 
of grog remained in his glass, undrunk, led his fel- 
low booklovers to suspect that something strange 
had happened. As he lay dying he told the story 
of his vision. He was the only man who ever saw 
a bookworm. 



THE MERCANTILE LIBRARY 185 

But if a bookworm should ever flap its wings 
and crow in Philadelphia, certainly the place where 
it would do so would be the Mercantile Library. 
I imagine that when Mr. Hedley, the delightful 
Ubrarian, shuts up at night, turns off the green- 
shaded lamps and rings the bell to thrust out the 
last lingering reader from the long dark tables, he 
treads hopefully through those enchanted alcoves. 
The thick sweet savor of old calf and the dainty 
bouquet of honest rag paper, the subtle exhalation 
of rows and rows of books (sweeter to the nostril of 
the bibliosoph than any mountain air that ever 
rustled in green treetops) is just the medium in 
which the fabled bookworm would crow like chan- 
ticleer. It is fifty years this month since the Mer- 
cantile Library moved into the old market build- 
ing on Tenth street, and while fifty years is a mere 
wink of the eyelash to any bookworm, still it is 
long enough for a few eggs to hatch. For that 
matter, some of the library's books have been in 
its possession nigh a hundred years, for it will cele- 
brate its centennial in 1922. 

The Mercantile is everything that a library 
ought to be. It has the still and reverent solemnity 
that a true home of learning ought to have, com- 
bined with an undercurrent of genial fellowship. 
It is not only a library but a club. Through the 
glass panels at the back one may see the chess 
players at their meditative rites, and the last inner 
fane where smoking is permitted and the votaries 
puff well-blackened briars and brood round the 



186 THE MERCANTILE IJBRARY 

boards of combat in immortal silence. The ciuaint 
old stained windows at the western end of the long 
hall look down on the magazine tables where one 
may be reading the Cosmopolitan and the next the 
Hibbert Journal. From these colored panes Frank- 
lin, Milton, Beethoven and Clovio gaze approv- 
ingly. They are surmounted by four symbolic fig- 
ures, representing (I suppose) their respective arts 
of Science, Poetry, Music and Art. Of Clovio the 
miniaturist one does not often hear, and I may as 
well be honest and admit I had to look him up in 
the encyclopedia. 

To the heart of the booklover the Mercantile 
speaks with a magical appeal. One wishes there 
were a little cloister attached to it where the 
true saints of the bookworld might be buried. It 
seems hard that those who have so long trodden 
the alcoves of peace should be interred elsewhere. 
To many devout souls libraries are the greatest 
churches of humanity. Even the casual dropper-in 
realizes that the Mercantile is more than a mere 
gathering of books. It is a guild, a sort of monas- 
tery. The members have secret raptures and side- 
long glances whereby they recognize one another. 
As thej^ walk down the long entrance passage they 
are purged of the world and the world's passions. 
As they pass through the little swinging gates that 
shut out the mere visitor, as they bury themselves 
in shadowy corners and aisles pungent with book- 
perfume, they have the grateful bearing of those 
secure in a strong fortress where the devil cannot 



THE MERCANTILE LIBRARY 187 

penetrate. For my own part, I have only one test 
of a good library, which I always employ when I 
get anywhere near a card catalogue. There is a 
certain work, in three volumes, famous chiefly be- 
cause Robert Louis Stevenson took the second vol- 
ume with him on his immortal Travels With a 
Donkey. It is called Pastors of the Desert, by 
Peyrat, a history of the Huguenots. If you will 
turn again to R. L. S.'s chapter called A Camp in 
the Dark you will see that he says: 

I had felt no other inconvenience, except when 
my feet encountered the lantern or the second vol- 
ume of Peyrat's Pastors of the Desert among the 
mixed contents of my sleeping bag. 

I am happy to assert that the Mercantile has a 
set of these volumes, and therefore one may pro- 
nounce it an A-1 library. 

Of course the Mercantile has many more ortho- 
dox treasures than Peyrat, though its function is 
not to collect incunabula or rare editions, but to 
keep its members supplied with the standard 
things, and the important books and periodicals of 
the day. Mr. Hedley was gracious enough to take 
me into the locked section of the gallery, where 
there are alcoves teeming with old volumes and 
rich in the dust that is so delightful to the lover of 
these things. He showed me, for instance, a first 
edition of the Authorized or King James Bible, im- 
printed at London by Robert Barker in 1611. In- 
side the front cover some one has written in pencil 
13 



188 THE MERCANTILE LIBRARY 

''Charge 5£." I am no expert on these matters, 
but I wonder if many a collector would not pay a 
hundred times as much for it nowadays? On 
another shelf I saw a beautiful edition of Euse- 
bius's Chronicles, printed at Venice in 1483, the 
paper as fresh and the rubrication as bright as 
when it was new. Opening it at random, I found 
the following note, which seemed quaintly topical : 

Anno salutis 811, Anno mundi 6010, Locustes 
gregatim ex Affrica volantes Italiam infestant. 

(Year of grace 811, Year of the earth 6010. The 
locusts fljdng in swarms from Africa, infest Italy.) 

In this book some former owner has written, 
with the honorable candor of the true booklover: 

De isto pretioso volumino animadvertere libet, 
quod non est ''edition premiere" sicut opus De- 
burii falso ostendit. 

W. H. Black, 4 Feb., 1831. 

(Concerning this precious volume it is permitted 
to remark that it is not the first edition, as the 
work of Deburius falsely maintains.) 

Ignoble Deburius, shame upon him! 

Mr. Hedley also showed me the famous Atlas 
Major of John Blaeu, the Dutch pubhsher, issued 
(in Spanish) in Amsterdam in 1662, eleven huge 
tomes in white vellum, stamped in gold. These 
marvelous large-scale maps, magnificently colored 
by hand, with every town marked by a tiny dot of 
gleaming gold, set the lover of^fine work in a tingle 
of amazement. Lucky indeed the bibhophile who 
finds his way to that sacred corner. One would 



THE MERCANTILE LIBRARY 189 

not blame any bookworm for crowing with a shrill 
cry of exultation if he were hatched in that treas- 
ury. There was not time to find out whether John 
Blaeu's atlas contained plates of American geogra- 
phy, but I hope to go again and study these fas- 
cinating volumes more at leisure, by Mr. Hedley's 
kindness. 

Perhaps the most curious feature of the Mer- 
cantile is the huge vaulted cellar which underlies 
the length of the whole building. Constructed 
originally for storage of market produce, before the 
days of modern refrigeration, it is now a dark and 
mysterious crypt extending under the adjoining 
streets, where the rumble of wheels sound over- 
head. The Hbrary's stamping press, used to incise 
the covers of books, gives one of the chambers a 
medieval monldsh air, and the equally medieval 
spelling of the janitor in some memoranda of his 
own posted upon a door do not detract from the 
fascinating spell. With a flashlight Mr. Hedley 
showed me the great extent of these underground 
corridors, and I imagined that if so friendly a libra- 
rian should ever hold a grudge against an author 
it would be an admirable place to lure him and 
leave him lost in the dark. He would never find 
his way out and his copyrights would expire long 
before his bones would be found. Joan Gutenberg, 
the library cat, dwells in that solemn maze of 
heavy brick arches, and she finds it depressing 
that the only literature stored down there is the 
overplus of old government documents. 



If 



190 MEDITATIONS ON OYSTERS 



MEDITATIONS ON OYSTERS 

Sansom street, below Ninth, runs a modest 
course through the middle of the afternoon, 
scooped between high and rather grimy walls so 
that a coolness and a shadow are upon it. It is a 
homely little channel, frequented by laundry 
wagons taking away great piles of soiled linen from 
the rear of the Continental Hotel, and Httle barefoot 
urchins pushing carts full of kindUng wood picked 
up from the Utter of splintered packing cases. On 
one side of the street is a big power-house where the 
drone and murmur of vast dynamos croon a soft 
undertone to the distant clang and zooming of the 
trolleys. Beyond that is the stage door of a bur- 
lesque theatre, and a faint sweetness of grease 
paint drifts to the nose down a dark, mysterious 
passageway. 

We walked down this little street, noticing the 
For Rent sign on a saloon at the corner and the 
pyramided boxes of green and yellow apples on a 
fruit stand, and it seemed to us that there was an 
unmistakable breath of autumn in the air. Out 
beyond, where the street widens and floods itself 
again with sun, there was heat and shimmer and 
the glittering plate-glass windows of jewelry deal- 
ers, but in the narrower strip of alley we felt a 
premonitory tang of future frost. At the end of 
August the sunlight gets yellower, more obHque; 
it loses the pale and deadly glare of earlier days. 



MEDITATIONS ON OYSTERS 191 

It is shallower, more colorful, but weaker of im- 
pact. Shall we say it has lost its punch? 

And then we saw a little oyster cafe, well known 
to many lovers of good cheer, that has been fur- 
bishing itself for the jolly days to come. No one 
knows yet whether the U-boats have frightened 
the oysters, whether the fat bivalves will be leaner 
and scarcer than in the good old days; no one 
knows whether there will even be enough of them 
to last out until next Easter; but in the meantime 
we all live in hope. And one thing is certain — the 
oyster season begins on Monday. The little cafe 
has repainted its white front so that it shines hos- 
pitably; and the sill and the cellar trapdoor where 
the barrels go in, and the shutters and the awning 
poles in front, are all a sticky, gUstening green. 
The white marble step, hollowed by thousands of 
eager feet in a million lunch-time forays, has been 
scrubbed and sandsoaped. And next Monday 
morning, bright and early, out goes the traditional 
red and green sign of the R. 

The ''poor patient oyster," as Keats calls him 
(or her, for there are lady oysters, too, did you 
know?) is not only a sessile bivalve mollusk, but a 
traditional symbol of autumn and winter cheer. 
Even if Mr. Hoover counts out the little round 
crackers in twos and threes, we hope there will be 
enough of the thoughtful and innocent shellfish to 
go around. When the cold winds begin to harp 
and whinney at street corners and wives go seek- 
ing among camphor balls for our last year's over- 



192 DARBY CREEK 

coats, you will be glad to resume your acquain- 
tance with a bowl of steaming bivalves, swimming 
in milk with little clots of yellow butter twirling on 
the surface of the broth. An oyster stew, a glass 
of light beer and a corncob pipe will keep your 
blue eyes blue to any weather, as a young poet of 
our acquaintance puts it. 



DARBY CREEK 

The other day we had an adventure that gave 
us great joy, and, like all great adventures, it was 
wholly unexpected. 

We went out to spend an evening with a certain 
Caliph who lives at Daylesford — how many Main 
Line commuters, by the way, know that it is 
named for Daylesford in Gloucestershire, the home 
of Warren Hastings? — and after supper the Cahph 
took us for a stroll round the twihght. In a green 
hollow below the house, only a few paragraphs 
away from the room where this Caliph sits and 
writes essays (he is the only author in Philadelphia 
who has never received a rejection slip) he showed 
us a delicious pool, fed by several springs and lying 
under great willows. From this pool tinkled a 
modest brook, splashing over a dam and winding 
away down an alluring valley. A white road ran 
beside it, through agreeable thickets and shrub- 
bery, starting off with a twist that suggested all 
manner of pleasant surprises for the wayfarer. It 



DARBY CREEK 193 

was just the kind of road to see spread before one 
at the cool outset of a long summer day. 

'^This," said the Caliph, "is the headwater of 
Darby creek." 

Little did the Caliph, douce man, know what 
that simple statement meant to us. The head- 
waters of Darby! Darby creek, and its younger 
brother Cobb's creek, were the Abana and Phar- 
par of our youth. We were nourished first of all 
on Cobb's, where we had our first swim and 
caught our first tadpoles and conducted our first 
search for buried treasure (and also smelt our first 
skunk cabbage). Then, in our teens, we ranged 
farther afield and learned the way to Darby, by 
whose crystal waters we used to fry bacon and 
read R. L. S. There will never be any other stream 
quite as dear to our heart. 

Until the other evening at the Cahph's we had 
not seen the water of Darby creek for ten years; 
not such a long time, perhaps, as some reckon 
these matters, but quite long enough. And our 
mind runs back with unrestrained enthusiasm to 
the days when we lived only two miles away from 
that delicious stream. Darby creek is associated 
in our mind with a saw and cider mill that used 
to stand — and very likely still stands — where the 
creek crosses the West Chester pike. To that ad- 
mirable spot, in the warm blue haze of an October 
afternoon, certain young men used to tramp. 
While the whirling blades of the sawmill screamed 
through green logs, these care-free innocents used 



194 DARBY CREEK 

to sit round a large vat where the juice of fresh 
apples came trickling through some sort of burlap 
squeezing coils, and where fat and groggy wasps 
buzzed and tottered and expired in rapture. These 
youths (who should not be blamed, for indeed they 
had few responsibilities and cares) would ply the 
flagon with diligence, merrily toasting the trolleys 
that hummed by on the way to West Chester. 
We will not give away their names, for they are 
now demure and respected merchants and lawyers 
and members of Rotary clubs and stock exchanges. 
But we remember one of these who was notably 
susceptible to cider. On the homeward path, as he 
flourished his intellect broadcast and quoted 
Maeterlinck and Bliss Carman, he was induced by 
his comrades to crawl inside a large terra-cotta 
pipe that lay by the roadside. Just how this act 
of cozening was accomplished we forget; perhaps 
it was a wager to see whether he, being proud of 
his slender figure, was slim enough to eel through 
the tube. At any rate, he vanished inside. The 
pipe lay at the top of a gentle hill, and for his 
companions it was the work of an inspired moment 
to seize the cylinder and set it rolling down the 
grade. Merrily it revolved for a hundred feet or 
more, at high velocity, and culbutted into a ditch. 
The dizzied victim emerged at length, quoting 
Rabelais. 

The mile and a half along the creek above this 
sawmill — up to where an odd Uttle branch railroad 
crosses the stream on a tottery trestle and Ithan 



DARBY CREEK 195 

creek runs in — was the pleasure haunt best known 
to us. It was approached through Coopertown, 
that rustic settlement which the Bryn Mawr squire 
has recently turned into a Tom Tiddler's ground. 
Across stubble fields and down an enchanting 
valley carpeted with moss we scoured on many and 
many an afternoon, laden with the rudiments of a 
meal. There was said to be a choleric farmer with 
a shotgun and an angry collie on the western marge 
of the stream, and it was always a matter of cour- 
age to send over an envoy (chosen by lot) to bag 
a few ears of corn for roasting. But for our own 
part we never encountered this enemy, though 
MifRin once came throbbing back empty-handed 
and pale-faced, reporting that a charge of lead 
had sung past his ears. Above a small dam the 
creek backed up to a decent depth, five feet or so 
of cool green water, and here bathing was con- 
ducted in the ancient Greek manner. There were 
sun-warmed fence rails nearby for basking, and 
then a fire would be built and vittles mobiUzed. 
Tobacco pouches wei*e emptied out into one com- 
mon store, and by the time this was smoked out 
a white moonhght would be spiUing over the 
autumn fields. 

We grew so fond of this section of our Abana 
that we never explored the full length of the 
stream. It would be a lovely day's jaunt, we 
imagine, to set out from Darby (where Cobb's 
creek joins Darby Creek) and walk up the little 
river to its source at Daylesford. (The original 



196 DAUBY CKEEK 

Daylesford, by the way, is also made lovely by 
the only other stripling stream that competes 
with Darby in our heart. This is the delicious 
Evenlode, an upper twig of the Thames.) It would 
be about twenty miles, which is a just distance for 
a walker who likes to study the scenery as he goes. 
Through the greater part of the trail the stream 
trots through open farming country, with old 
mills here and there — paper mills, flour mills and 
our famous shrine of sawdust and cider. The lower 
waters, from Darby down to Tinicum Island and 
the mouth at Essington, would probably be less 
walkable. We suspect them of being marshy, 
though we speak only by the map. Mr. Browning, 
we remember, wrote a poem about a bishop who 
ordered his tomb at Saint Praxed's. We, if we had 
a chance to lay out any blue-prints of our final 
rolltop, would like to be the Colyumist who ordered 
his tomb by Darby creek, and not too far away 
from that cider mill. And let no one think that it 
is a stream of merely sentimental interest. Hog 
Island, as all will grant, is a place of national im- 
portance. And what is Hog Island, after all? 
Only the delta of Darby creek. 



DARBY REVISITED 197 



DARBY REVISITED 

The Soothsayer owns a car, and tools passion- 
ately about the country, revisiting the vistas and 
glimpses that he thinks particularly lovely. But 
he is a stubborn partisan of such beauty spots as 
he has himself discovered, and bitterly reluctant 
to concede any glamour to places he hasn't visited. 
For a long time he has heard us raving about 
Darby creek, and always asserted furiously that 
we had never seen a certain road up Norristown 
way that was (he said) a far, far better thing than 
any place we would be likely to know about. But 
the other evening, somewhat stirred by our piteous 
babble about the old cider mill we hadn't visited 
for ten years, he got out his 'bus and we set forth. 

We went out along the West Chester pike, and 
the manner of the Soothsayer was subtly super- 
ciHous. All the way out from Sixty-ninth street 
the road is in bad condition, and as he nursed his 
handsome vehicle over the bumps we could see 
that the Soothsayer thought (though too polite to 
say so) that we were leading him into a very be- 
draggled and ill-assorted region. Another very 
sinister rebuke was that he had left up the canopy 
top over the car, although it was a serene and lucid 
evening, flushed with quiet sunset. This seemed 
to imply that any tract of country we would lead 
him to would hardly be worth examining carefully. 
As we passed by the university astronomical obser- 



198 DARBY REVISITED 

vatory he made a last attempt to divert us from 
the haven of our desire. He suggested that we 
both go in and have a look at the moon through 
the big telescope. As it was then broad and sunny 
daylight we treated this absurd project with con- 
tempt. 

Down a steep winding hill, and we came upon 
the historic spot with delightful suddenness. Our 
heart was uplifted. There it was, unchanged, the 
old gray building standing among trees, with the 
clank and grind of the water-wheels, the yellow 
dapple of level sun upon the western wall. 

But what was this? Under the porch-roof was a 
man bending over iron plates, surrounded by a 
dazzle of pale blue light. He was using an electric 
welder, and the groan of a dynamo sounded from 
the interior of the old mill. ''It's probably a 
garage now," said the Soothsayer, ''most of these 
old places are." 

But that was the Soothsayer's last flash of 
cynicism, for in another moment the spell of the 
place had disarmed him. We approached, and it 
seemed to us there was something familiar in the 
face of the man operating the welder, as he watched 
his dazzling blue flame through a screen. It was 
Mr. Flounders, who has run the old mill for going 
on thirty years, and who used to preside at the 
cider press in days gone by, when we had many a 
pull at his noble juices. But he hasn't made any 
cider for several years he told us; the sawmill shed 
is unused, and the old mill itself is being fitted up 



DARBY REVISITED 199 

with ice-making machinery. He says he went out 
West for a while, but he came back to Darby 
creek in the end. We don't blame him. The spell 
of that enchanting spot may well keep its hold on 
all who have ever loved it. 

The Soothsayer and his passenger got out their 
pipes and brooded a while, watching the green 
swift water of the mill race; the sunny flicker of 
the creek below as it darts on its way through the 
meadows; the great oak tree steeped in sunlight, 
and the old millstones that still lie about by the 
front door. Inside the building the wooden 
beams and levers and grooved wheels are just as 
they were when the place was built as a flour and 
feed mill, in 1837. The woodwork still has that 
clean, dusty gloss that is characteristic of a flour 
mill. By the sawing shed lie a number of great 
logs, admirable site for a quiet smoke. The Sooth- 
sayer, tremendously impressed by this time, wan- 
dered about with us and listened kindly to all our 
spasms of reminiscence. We both agreed that the 
old mill, dozing in the sunlight, with the pale and 
tremulous shimmer of blue light in the porch 
where Mr. Flounders was working, was a fit sub- 
ject for some artist's brush. 

We did not fail to admire the remarkable old 
house across the road, where Mr. Flounders lives. 
It is built in three portions: a wooden lean-to, a 
very ancient section of whitewashed logs (which 
must be some 200 years old) and then the largest 
part of the dappled stone of various colors so 



200 THE HAPPY VALLEY 

familiar to Pennsylvania ramblers. Nothing can 
be more delightful in the rich tint of afternoon 
light than that medley of brown, gray, yellow and 
ochre stonework. We pointed out the little side 
road that we were to follow, running up the valley 
of che creek, past reddening apple orchards and 
along the meadows past the swimming pool. And 
then the Soothsayer paid us a genuine compliment. 
''Let's take down the top," said he. ''Then we 
can really see something!" 



THE HAPPY VALLEY 
Two FRIENDS, who may be called for present pur- 
poses Messrs. Madrigal and Doggerel, dismounted 
from the West Chester trolley at the crossing of 
Darby creek. Madrigal rolled a cigarette. Dog- 
gerel filled a pipe. They paid their respects to the 
old sawmill and Mr. Flounders, its presiding deity. 
Then they set off for a tramp up the valley. 

It was a genial afternoon, after a night of thrash- 
ing rain and gale. The air was meek and placid; 
the sky a riotous blue. After the tumultuous wash- 
ing of the storm all the heavenly linen was hung 
out to dry, bulging and ballooning in snowy clots 
along the upper dome. The tents of creekside 
campers were sodden, and great branches lay 
scattered on the meadows, wrenched down by the 
wind. By Mr. Sanderson's farm at Brookthorpe a 
scoutmaster was breaking camp, preparing to take 
his boys home. They had only been there four 



THE HAPPY VALLEY 201 

days and the grieved urchins stood in miserable 
silence. The hurricane of the night before had 
nearly washed them away, and as everything was 
so wet their leader feared to let them sleep on the 
ground. The boys were heartbroken, but the 
scoutmaster said sagely: ''I'd rather have the 
boys mad at me than their mothers.'' 

In spite of the recent downpour, the walking 
was admirable. Roads were damp, easy under- 
foot, free from dust. Madrigal and Doggerel were 
gay at heart. They scrambled up the embank- 
ment of the deserted Delaware County Railroad, 
which is the most direct pathway toward the head- 
waters of Darby. It is possible to go along the 
bank of the creek, but underbrush was still 
drenched, and Mr. Sanderson uttered cryptic 
warning of a certain bull. On the grass-grown 
track of the antique railroad, treading gingerly 
over worm-eaten wooden trestles, the explorer en- 
joys perfect sunny tranquillity. It is only five 
miles from the city limits, but one moves in the 
heart of bird-song and ancient solitude. One 
freight train a day is the traffic of the forgotten 
line, and probably the director general of railroads 
never heard of it. It would not be surprising to 
meet Rip Van Winkle pacing thoughtfully along 
the mouldering ties. And as it is raised high above 
the valley, the walker gains a fair prospect over 
the green country of Darbyland. The creek, swol- 
len with rain, brawled rapidly along its winding 
shallows. Cattle munched in the meadows. Gold- 



202 THE HAPPY VALLEY 

enrod was minting its gold, and a first faint sug- 
gestion of autumn breathed in the sleepy air. 
Madrigal tore off his linen collar, stuffed it in his 
pocket, and fell to quoting Keats. Doggerel, hav- 
ing uttered some painful words about the old cider 
traffic, now evaporated. Madrigal bestirred his 
memory of the Ode to Autumn. "Or by a cider 
press, with patient look, Thou watchest the last 
oozings, hours by hours." Madrigal is a man of 
well-stored mind, and as the wayfarers tripped 
nimbly along the ties, where wild flowers em- 
broider the old cuttings and deserted farms stand 
crumbling along knotted apple trees, he beguiled 
the journey with varied speculation and discourse. 
At a long-abandoned station known as Foxcroft 
— which is now only a quarry, and has the air of 
some mining settlement of the far West — the walk- 
ers began to understand something of the secret of 
this region. It is a fox-hunting country (according 
to the map, the next station on this mystic line was 
called The Hunt) and from here on they caught 
glimpses of the life of that picturesque person 
known as the "country gentleman." There were 
jumping barriers for horses erected in the mea- 
dows; rows of kennels, and a red-cheeked squire 
with a riding crop and gaiters striding along the 
road. Along that rolUng valley, with whispering 
cornfields and fair white mansions fingering among 
trees, is the tint and contour of rural England, 
long-settled, opulent and serene. In one thing 
only does it lack Engfish charm : there are no old 



THE HAPPY VALLEY 203 

ale-houses along the way. No King's Arms or 
Waggon and Horses or Jolly Ploughhoy where one 
may sit on a bench well-polished by generations of 
corduroyed hindquarters and shut out the smiling 
horizon with a tankard's rim. "Oh land of free- 
dom.!" cried Madrigal, ironically, clucking his 
tongue upon a drouthy palate. 

From Foxcroft there is a tempting blue vista up 
a tributary valley toward Newtown Square, which 
would be well worth exploring; but Madrigal and 
Doggerel turned away through another covered 
bridge in order to keep along the trend of Darby. 
A detour along the road brought them back to the 
creek at a magnificent stone bridge of three arches. 
The man who designed that bridge was a true 
artist, and had studied the old English bridges. 
And at this corner stands a curious old house bear- 
ing the inscription Ludwig's Lust (Ludwig's Pleas- 
ure) Built 1774, Remodelled 1910. As the pedes- 
trians stood admiring, a car drove up to the door, 
and the hapless Doggerel created some irritation 
by hopefully asldng one of the motorists if the 
place were an inn. 

After Ludwig's Lust came the most enchanting 
stretch of the journey. The road runs close by the 
creek, which foams along a stony course under an 
aisle of trees. Where Wigwam Run joins the creek 
is a group of farm buildings and a wayside spring 
of perfect water. It was sorry to see a beautiful 
old outhouse of dappled stonework being pickaxed 
into rubble. At this point is the fork of Darby and 
14 



Little Darby. An old deserted mill is buried in 
greenery, the stones furred with moss. Just be- 
yond, a little road dips off to the left, crossing both 
branches of the stream. Here, where Little Darby 
churns cascading among great boulders and tiny 
shelves of sand, one might well be in some moun- 
tain elbow of the Poconos. Madrigal and Doggerel 
gazed tenderly on this shady cavern of wood and 
water. If it had been an hour earlier, with the sun- 
light strong upon these private grottoes, a bathe 
would have been in order. But it was already 
drawing late. 

The Berwyn road, on which the travelers now 
proceeded, is full of surprises. Great houses crown 
the hilltops, with rows of slender poplars silhou- 
etted against the sky. Here and there a field of 
tawny grain lifts a smooth shoulder against blue 
heaven. A little drinking fountain on a downward 
grade drops a tinkling dribble of cold water from a 
carved lion's mouth. Among old willows and but- 
tonwoods stand comely farmhouses — one beside 
the road is tinted a rich salmon pink. A real estate 
agent's sign at the entrance to a fine tract says, 
''For Sale, 47 Acres, with Runing Water." The 
walkers thought they discerned a message in that. 
For a rune means a mark of magic significance, a 
whisper, a secret counsel. And the chiming water 
of Darby has its own whispers of secret counsel as 
it runs its merry way, a laughing little river that 
preaches sermons unawares. 

In the meadows near Old St. David's Church — 



THE HAPPY VALLEY 205 

built when Philadelphia itself was hardly more 
than a village — are Guernsey calves, soft as a plush 
cushion, with bright topaz eyes. Madrigal told 
how he had written a poem about Old St. David's 
when he was sixteen, in which he describeii the 
''kine" grazing by the stream, and in which (after 
the manner of poets in their teens) he besought 
merciful Death to come and take him. Death, one 
supposes, was sorely tempted, but happily re- 
frained from reaping the tender bardling. 

In the quiet graveyard of Old St. David's the 
travelers halted a while, to see the grave of An- 
thony Wayne and admire the thin trailers of the 
larches swinging in the golden flood of late sun- 
hght that slanted down the valley. It was 6 
o'clock, and they were beginning to doubt their 
abihty to reach their destination on time. A party 
of motorists were just leaving the church, and 
both Madrigal and Doggerel loitered pointedly by 
the gate in hopes of a lift. But no such fortune. 
So they set valiantly upon the last leg of the after- 
noon. In a shady bend of the road came a merry 
motor zooming along and Doggerel's friend, Jarden 
Guenther, at the wheel. Mr. Guenther was doubt- 
less amazed to see Doggerel in this remote spot, 
but he was going the other way, and passed with 
a cheerful halloo. Then, by the old Defense Signal 
tree on the Paoli road, came a flivver, which res- 
cued the two plodders and took them two miles or 
so on their way. By the Tredyffrin golf course 
they were set down before a winding byway, 



206 OUR OLD DESK 

which they followed with tingling shanks and 
hearts full of achievement. 

A shady lane by the now stripling Darby 
brought them to a quiet pool under leaning wil- 
lows, and a silver gush of water over a small dam 
beneath which a bronze Venus bathes herself 
thoughtfully. Madrigal wore the face of one en- 
tering into joy rarely vouchsafed to battered 
poets. Doggerel, in his paltry way, was likewise 
of blithe cheer. Through a gap in the hedge they 
scaled a knoll and reached their haven. And here 
they found what virtuous walkers have ever found 
at the end of an innocent journey — a bath, a beer, 
and a blessing. 



OUR OLD DESK 

We see that there has been a fire at a second- 
hand furniture warehouse on Arch street. We 
think we can offer an explanation for the blaze. 
Our old desk was there. 

That desk was always a hoodoo. Last autumn, 
when we gave up commuting and moved into 
town, we had to get rid of some of our goods in 
order to squeeze ourselves into an apartment. The 
very first thing we parted with was our old desk. 
We did not tell genial Mr. P., the dealer in second- 
hand furniture, that the piece was a Jonah, for we 
were afraid it would knock fifty cents or so off his 
offer, but now we feel rather shamefaced for not 
having warned him. 



OUR OLD DESK 207 

We bought the desk before we were married, at 
a department store in New York. It was almost 
the last article that store, a famous one in its day, 
got paid for. Soon after selling it the house failed. 

We moved the desk out to a cottage in the coun- 
try. We sat down in front of it. We didn't know 
it then, but we are convinced now there was some 
evil genius in it. It must have been built of slip- 
pery elm, full of knots, cut in the dark of the moon 
while a brindle cat was mewing. The drawers 
stuck once a week and had to be pared down with 
a jack-knife. We sat at that desk night after night, 
with burning visions of literary immortality. We 
wrote poems that no one would buy. We wrote 
stories that gradually became soiled and wrinkled 
around the folds of the manuscript. We wrote 
pamphlets eulogizing hotels and tried to palm 
them off on the managers as advertising booklets. 
The hotels accepted the booklets and went out of 
business before paying for them. Sitting at that 
desk we composed sparkling essays for a news- 
paper in Toledo, and after the paper had printed a 
bunch of them we wrote to the editor and asked 
him how about a check. He replied that he did not 
understand we were writing that stuff for actual 
money. He was quite grieved to have misunder- 
stood us so. He thought we were merely writing 
them for the pleasure of uplifting the hearts of 
Toledo. 

There was another odd thing about that desk. 
There was some drowsy sirup in its veins. Perhaps 



208 OUR OLD DESK 

the wood hadn't been properly seasoned. Anyway, 
we couldn't keep awake while sitting at it. Night 
after night, assiduously, while the jolly old Long 
Island mosquitoes hummed in through the open 
windows like Liberty motors, we would begin tc 
scribe. After an hour or so we would always fall 
asleep over the tawny keys of our ancient type- 
writer. It may be that the trouble lay partly in 
the typing bus, for we were so inexpert that we 
couldn't pound rapidly enough to keep ourself 
awake. We remember memorizing the letters on 
the first row of keys in a vain hope that if we 
could say qwertyuiop off by heart it would help us 
to move along faster, but it did no good. Wej 
started a novel, but after six months of wrestUng 
we decided that as long as we worked at that desk 
we would never get it done. We tried writing on 
the kitchen table, in front of the stove — it was 
winter by that time — and we got the novel done 
in no time. 

When we moved to Marathon, the van contain- 
ing that desk broke down near a novelty factory 
in Trenton. Probably that novelty factory was its 
home and the old flat-top had nostalgia. In order 
to get the desk into the Marathon house its top 
had to be unscrewed and the screws were lost. 
After that, whenever we were trying to write a 
poem in the small hours of the night, when we got 
aroused in the heat of composition and shifted 
round on our chair, the whole top of the desk 



OUR OLD DESK 209 

would slide off and the inkwell would cascade on 
to the floor. 

There was one drawer in that desk that we look 
back on with particular affection. We had been 
asked by a publisher in Chicago to contribute the 
section on Etiquette for a Household Encyclo- 
pedia that was to be issued. That was about 1914, 
if we remember rightly. We knew nothing what- 
ever about Etiquette. The article was to deal 
with the origin and history of social usages, coming 
down to the very latest thing in table manners, 
accepting and declining invitations, specimen let- 
ters dealing with every social emergency, such as 
being invited to go to a clambake, a wedding or 
the dedication of a sanitary dog-pound. We had 
an uproarious time compiling the essay. It was 
to contain at least fifteen thousand words and we 
were to get fifty dollars for it. In the chapter on 
specimen letters we let ourself go without restraint. 
In these specimen letters we amused ourself by 
using the names of all our friends. We chuckled to 
think of their amazement on finding themselves 
enshrined in this Household Encyclopedia, writing 
demure and stilted little regrets or acceptances for 
imaginary functions. 

The manuscript of this article had to be mailed 
to Chicago on a certain date or the fifty dollars 
would be forfeit. Late the night before we toiled 
at our desk putting the final touches on The Eti- 
quette of Courtship and Etiquette for Young 
Girls at Boarding School. Never having been a 



210 OUR OLD DESK 

young girl at boarding school, our ideas were 
largely theoretical, but still we thought they were 
based on sound sense and a winsome instinct as to 
comely demeanor. We threw our heart into the 
task and felt that Louisa Alcott herself could not 
have counseled more becoming decorum. It was 
long after midnight when we finished the last reply 
of a young girl to the young man who had called 
her by her first name three months before we felt 
he had any right to do so. We put these last two 
sections of the manuscript into a drawer of the 
desk, to give them a final reading the next morn- 
ing. 

Late that night there came a damp fog, one of 
those pearly Long Island fogs. The desk drawer 
swelled up and retired from active life. Contain- 
ing its precious freight, it was immovable. We 
stood the desk upside down, we tugged frantically 
at it, we hammered and chiseled and strove but in 
vain. The hour for mailing the copy approached. 
At last baffied, we had to speed to a mail-box and 
post the treatise on Etiquette without those two 
chapters. The publisher, we knew, would not 
miss them, though to us they contained the cream 
of our whole philosophy of politeness, containing 
our prized aphorisms on Consideration for Others 
The Basis of Good Manners. 

We were never able to get that drawer open 
again. When we sold the desk to Mr. P. it was 
still tightly stuck. Some months ago we were 
passing along Arch street, just under the Reading 



CALLING ON WILLIAM PENN 211 

Railway viaduct, and we saw a familiar sight on 
the pavement. It was our old desk, covered with 
dust and displayed for sale, but unmistakable to 
our recognitory eye. Furtively we approached it 
and gave the well-known bottom drawer a yank. 
It was still jammed, and presumably the manu- 
script was still within. We thought for a moment 
of buying the old thing again, splitting it open with 
an ax and getting out our literary offspring. But 
we didn't. And now this fire has come along and 
undoubtedly the desk perished in the flames. If 
only that chapter on Young Girls at Boarding 
School could have been rescued .... We 
have a daughter of our own now, and it might 
have given us some hints on how to bring her up. 



CALLING ON WILLIAM PENN 
It would be a seemly thing, perhaps, if candi- 
dates for political office were to take a private trip 
up the tower of the City Hall and spend an hour 
or so in solitary musing. Looking out over the 
great expanse of men and buildings they might 
get a vision of Philadelphia that would be more 
valuable to them than the brisk bickering business 
of ''showing each other up." 

Under the kindly guidance of Mr. Kellett, the 
superintendent of elevators in the City Hall, I was 
permitted to go up to the little gallery at the base 
of the statue. A special elevator runs up inside the 
tower, starting from the seventh floor. Through 



212 CALLING ON WILLIAM PENN 

great echoing spaces, crossed with girders and lit- 
tered with iron work which the steeplejacks have 
taken down from the summit for painting and re- 
pairs, the small car rises slowly into the top of the 
dome, over 500 feet above the street. Then you 
step out onto the platform. Along the raiUng are 
the big arc lights that illuminate the pinnacle at 
night. Over your head is the projecting square toe 
of William Penn, his sturdy stockinged legs, his 
coat-tails and outstretched right hand as he stands 
looking toward the treaty ground. He loved the 
''fruits of solitude," and he has them here. He is 
not often disturbed, save by the nimble acrobats 
who swing in a bosun's chair at their unenvied 
tasks. A bosun's chair, let one add, is only a plank, 
not much bigger than a shingle, noosed in midair 
in the loop of a rope. 

The street-dweller knows curiously little of the 
atmospheric conditions. The groundling would 
have said that yesterday was a day of crystal 
clearness. Yet from the top of the tower, even in 
the frank morning sunlight, the view was strangely 
restricted. The distances were veiled in summer 
haze. Camden, beyond the shorehne, was a bluish 
blur; even League Island was not visible. On the 
west the view faded away into the greenery of 
Overbrook, and northward the eye did not reach 
to the suburbs at all. Enclosed by this softened 
dimness, the city seemed even vaster than it is. 

At that height the clamor of the city is dulled to 
a gentle mumble, pierced by the groan of trolleys 



CALLING ON WILLIAM PENN 213 

and the sharp yelps of motorcars trundling round 
the Hall. On the glittering pathway of the river 
ferries and tugs were sliding, kicking up a riffle of 
white foam behind them. One curious and ap- 
plaudable feature is the absence of smoke. All over 
the roofs of the city float little plumes and wisps 
of steam, detaching and drifting away in the warm 
blue shimmer Hke dissolving feathers. A cool 
breeze was moving in from over the Park, where 
the tall columns of the Smith Memorial were rising 
over a sea of green. The Parkway seen from above 
stands out as the most notable feature of Phila- 
delphia topography. From there, too, one sees 
how the northeastern corner of Broad Street Sta- 
tion cuts into the Hne of the Parkway, and wonders 
just how this will be rectified. 

It is fascinating to lean over that sunny parapet 
and watch the city at its work. Down at the cor- 
ner of Broad and Chestnut I could see a truck 
loaded with rolls of paper, drawn by three horses, 
turning into Chestnut street. On the roof of 
the Wanamaker store was a party of sightseers, 
mostly ladies, going round with a guide. Mr. 
Kellett and I got out our kerchiefs and gave them 
a wave. In a moment they saw us, and all fluttered 
enthusiastic response. We were amused to notice 
one lady who detached herself from the party and 
went darting about the roof in a most original and 
random fashion. From our eyrie it looked rather 
as though she was going to take a canter round the 
running track on the top of the store, and we 



^14 CALLING ON WILLIAM PENN 

waited patiently to see what she was up to. Then 
she disappeared. As one looks over the flat bare 
roofs of skyscrapers it seems curious that so few 
of them are put to any use. Only on one of the 
cliffs of offices could I see any attempt at beauty. 
This was on the roof of the Finance Building, 
where there are three tiny grass plots and a little 
white bench. 

It is possible to climb up through William 
Penn's left leg by a narrow ladder, dodging among 
beams and girders and through a trap-door, and so 
up to the brim of his beaver. I was keen to essay it, 
but Mr. Kellett discouraged me by saying a suit 
of overalls was necessary. I am no respecter of 
garments, but I did not press the point, as I feared 
that my friendly guide might still think I had a 
grenade about my person, and was yearning for 
immortahty by blowing Wilham's head off. So 
we compromised by going down to see the inside 
of the huge clock dials, and the ingenious com- 
pressed air devices by which the hands are moved 
every thirty seconds. A minute space on each 
clock face is an arc of about fourteen inches, so 
the minute hand jumps about seven inches every 
half minute. In a quiet room at the base of the 
tower are the two master clocks that control the 
whole mechanism. They are very beautiful to 
watch, and it is interesting to see that they were 
made in Germany, by Strasser and Rohde, Glass- 
hutte, Saxony. Exact noon is telegraphed from 



CALLING ON WILLIAM PENN 215 

Washington every day so that these clocks can be 
kept strictly on the tick. 

If we were a city of mystics, instead of a city 
of hustling and perturbed business men, we would 
elect a soothsayer to dwell on the little gallery 
below William Penn. The pleasantest job in the 
world has always been that of an oracle. This 
soothsayer would be wholly aloof from the passion 
of the streets. (Passion, said William Penn, is a 
sort of fever in the mind, which always leaves us 
weaker than it found us.) He would spend his 
time reading the "Fruits of Solitude" and would 
occasionally scribble messages on slips of paper, 
which he would weight with marbles and throw 
overboard. Those who found these precious say- 
ings would read them reverently, and go on about 
their folly undismayed. Baskets of victuals and 
raiment would occasionally be conveyed to this 
lofty dreamer by humble admirers. On his windy 
perch he would brood lovingly upon the great city 
of his choice. When election time came round he 
would throw down shps telling people whom to 
vote for. If he thought (not mincing words) that 
none of the proposed candidates was worth a 
damn, he would frown down forbiddingly, and the 
balloting would have to be postponed until can- 
didates satisfactory to his vision had been put for- 
ward. When they told him that John Jones had 
hosts of friends, scraps of paper would be found 
in the City Hall courtyard saying " It is the friends 
of mayors who make all the trouble." And the 



216 CALLING ON WILLIAM PENN 

people would marvel greatly. He would be the 
only completely blissful prophet in the world, as 
the only way for an oracle to be happy is to put 
him so far away from the market-place that he 
can't see that the people pay no attention to his 
utterances. What William Penn used to call his 
"natural candle/' that is the light of his spirit, 
would burn with a cheerful and unguttered radi- 
ance. Just inside the door that leads to the tower 
gallery there is a comfortable meditative armchair 
of the kind usually found in police stations. So 
perhaps they are planning to have just such an 
oracle. 

I wandered for some time in the broad corridors 
of the City Hall, which smell faintly of musky dis- 
infectant. I peered into the district attorney's in- 
dictment department, where a number of people 
were gathered. Occasionally a clerk would call out 
names, and some would disappear into inner 
rooms. Whether they were plaintiffs or defendants 
I could not conjecture. In the calf-Hned alcoves of 
the law library, learned men were reading under 
green lamps. I looked uncomprehendingly at the 
signs on the doors — Court of Common Pleas, Court 
of Oyer and Terminer, Orphans^ Court, Delinquent 
Tax Bureau, Inspector of Nuisances. All this com- 
plex machinery that keeps the city in order makes 
the layman marvel at its efficiency and its appar- 
ent kindliness. He wants to do something horrible 
in order to see how the wheels go round. He feels 
a little guilty not to have committed some crime. 



MADONNAS OF THE CURB 217 



MADONNAS OF THE CURB 

A LITTLE girl — she can't have been more than 
twelve years old — stood up gravely and said: 
" The meeting will please come to order. The secre- 
tary will read the minutes of the last meeting." 

The gathering of small females — some ragged, 
some very trim, ranging in age from eight to four- 
teen — sat expectant. A child in a clean pink dress 
with neatly braided blonde hair advanced seriously 
and read the minutes of the previous meeting. 

'^ Are there any corrections? " said the president. 

There were none and the meeting proceeded to 
business. On a long table in the schoolroom was a 
large laundry basket, a small quilted mattress, 
sheets, blankets and other accessories. There was 
a baby there, a life-size doll, amazingly realistic. 
The business of the meeting was the discussion, 
under the guidance of Miss Matilda Needle, the 
teacher, of the proper way of making a baby's bed, 
putting him to sleep in the basket and ventilating 
the room. It was the Little Mothers' League of 
the Vare School, on Morris street, holding its 
weekly meeting. 

Miss Needle took the chair. ^^I saw something 
the other day," she said to the children, "that 
pleased me very much. I was coming down the 
street and I saw Elsie Pulaski holding a baby like 
this. (She illustrated by picking up the doll, let- 
ting its head sag, and all the Little Mothers looked 



218 MADUJNMAS UJ^^ THE CURB 

very grave.) "I was about to speak to her when 
Bertha Fitz ran across the street and said to her: 
' You mustn't hold the baby hke that. You'll hurt 
him.' And Bertha showed her the right way to 
hold him. Now can any of you show me the way 
Bertha did it?" 

Thirty small arms waved frantically in the air. 
There was a furious eagerness to show how the 
luckless Elsie should have held her baby brother. 

"Well, Mary," said the teacher, "you show us 
how the baby should be picked up." 

Blushing with pride, Mary advanced to the 
table and with infinite care inserted one arm under 
the large doll. But in her excitement she made a 
false start. She used the right arm where the posi- 
tion of the artificial infant demanded the left. 
This meant that her other arm had to pass diag- 
onally across the baby in an awkward way. Imme- 
diately several of the juvenile audience showed 
signs of professional disgust. Hands vibrated in 
air. Another member of the Little Mothers' 
League was called upon, and poor Mary took her 
seat in discomfiture. 

They passed to another topic. One of the mem- 
bers demonstrated the correct way of making the 
baby's bed. With proud correctness she disposed 
the mattress, the rubber sheeting, the sheets and 
blankets, showing how each should be tucked in, 
how the upper sheet should be turned down over 
the top of the blanket, so that the wool would not 



MADONNAS OF THE CURB 219 

irritate the baby's chin. The others watched her 
with the severity of judges on the bench. 

The teacher began to ask questions. 

''Who should the baby sleep with?" she said. 

One very small girl, carried away by the form 
of the question, cried out, "His mother!" The 
others waved their hands. 

''Well, who should he sleep with?" said Miss 
Needle. 

"Himself!" cried several triumphantly. 

"Why should he sleep by himself? Rosa, you 
tell us." 

Rosa stood up. She was a dark-eyed little crea- 
ture, with hair cropped short — we will not ask 
why. Her face worked with the excitement of 
putting her thoughts into language. 

"If he sleeps with his mother she might lay on 
him and smother him." 

They all seemed to shudder. It was as though 
the unfortunate infant was perishing before their 
very eyes. 

The Little Mothers' Leagues are groups of 
small girls, ranging in age from eight to fourteen, 
who are being taught the essentials of caring for 
babies, under the direction of the Child Federa- 
tion. By the kindness of the Federation, and Miss 
O'Neill, the supervisor of public school play- 
grounds, I was privileged to visit four of these 
classes the other afternoon. In three of the 
schools the children were learning how to put the 
baby to bed; in one they were sitting around a 

IS 



mo MADONNAS OF THE CURB 

small bathtub studying the technique of the 
baby's bath. Some of the girls had brought babies 
with them, for almost all of them are at least partly 
responsible for the care of one or more children. 
There was a moving pathos in the gravity with 
which these matrons before their time discussed 
the problems of their craft; and yet it was also 
the finest kind of a game and they evidently en- 
joyed it heartily. Many of them come from 
ignorant homes where the parents know next to 
nothing of hygiene. Their teachers tell of the 
valiant efforts of these children to convert their 
mothers to more sanitary ways — efforts which are 
happily often successful. In one home, where the 
father was a tailor, the baby was kept in a room 
where the pressing was done, the air was hot and 
heavy with steam. The small daughter, who was a 
member of the Little Mothers' League, insisted 
on the baby being removed to another room. Two 
children in another school, who had been told of 
the importance of keeping the baby's milk on ice, 
tried to make home-made ice-boxes, which their 
fathers, becoming interested, promised to finish 
for them. 

One wishes that all this might be only an en- 
chanting game for these children, and that it 
would not be necessary for them to put it into 
practice every day, with tired little arms and 
aching backs. He must be stiff-hearted indeed 
who can watch these gatherings, their tousled 
little heads and bare legs, their passionate intent- 



MADONNAS OF THE CURB 221 

ness, their professional enthusiasm, without some- 
thing of a pang. They know so much of the prob- 
lems, and they are so pathetically small. There is 
a touching truth in the comment of one teacher in 
her report: '' The girls who had no babies at home 
seemed to take greater interest than those that did 
have." But this is not always so, for nothing 
could be more enthusiastic than the little essays 
written by the children themselves, describing 
what they have learnt. I cannot resist a few 
quotations : 

No one can be healthy unless she is extremely 
clean. Baby will want his bath daily, with soap 
and warmish water. You should not put to much 
soap on the baby's face as it get in the baby's 
eyes. They likes to kick the water as long as sup- 
port his head. Before starting on this swimming 
expedition, you should have all, her or him clothes, 
warm, by you, and he expects a warm flannel on 
your knees to lie on. You must carefully dry all 
the creases in his fat body for him, with a soft 
towel. (Ruth Higgins, Fifth Grade.) 

The Little Mothers' League has helped me a 
good bit in dressing my little baby sister and I 
have enjoyed it verj^ much and I think it is a very 
sencible society. I have learnt how to dress the 
baby in winter and summer. And after it is done 
with the bottle it should be boiled. (Helen Potter.) 

A baby is not to be made to walk to soon be- 
cause he might become bollegged. Some mothers 
think it is nice to see the baby walk soon. You 
should never listen to what your neighbor says 
when your baby is sick, but take him to a doctor. 
(Anna Mack, Sixth Grade.) 



222 THE PARADISE SPECIAL 

In washing a baby you should have a httle tub 
to bath it in and when you hear the doorbell ring 
you should never let your baby in the tub while 
you go because many of them get drowned, and 
you should use castial soap because that is the 
best. (Marie Donahue, Seventh Grade, age 12.) 

But perhaps most eloquent of all is what little 
Mary Roberts says. Mary is in the Sixth Grade 
at the Boker School : 

"The melancholy days are come 
The saddest of the year," 

Is what we all think when the time comes when 
The Little Mothers' League has to break up for the 
year. For seven weeks we have listened eagerly 
to what Miss Ford has told us. We all hope Miss 
Ford will come back to Boker School next fall 
and teach us how to care for infants. 



THE PARADISE SPECIAL 

The big bus known to thousands of Philadelphia 
children as the Paradise Special was standing 
ready at 1621 Cherry street. Inside, in one of the 
large classrooms of the Friends' Select School, 
twenty small boys, each carefully tagged and 
carrying his bundle, were waiting impatiently. 
It was half-past eight in the morning, and the bus 
was about to leave for Paradise Farm with the 
Tuesday morning consignment of urchins for the 
summer camp run by the Children's Country 
Week Association. The doctor was looking over 



THE PARADISE SPECIAL 223 

them and one poor youngster was trying to con- 
ceal his tears from the rest. The doctor had 
found a spot in his throat and he had a high 
temperature. He was not to be allowed to go this 
week; his turn would have to come later. They 
were all a bit impatient by this time. Most of 
them had been up since half-past five, counting 
every minute. 

If you enjoy a shrill treble upoar, and find it 
amusing to watch a busload of small boys enjoying 
themselves at the top of their versatile powers, I 
recommend a trip on the Paradise Special. 
Throughout the week the bus is busy taking chil- 
dren and mothers to the various farms and camps 
run by the Association, but Tuesday morning is 
boys' day. Not the least amusing feature of the 
trip is to watch the expressions of those the bus 
passes on the road. It creates a broad grin 
wherever it goes. That shouting caravan of juve- 
nile glee is indeed an entertaining sight. 

There were nineteen boys on board when we left 
Cherry street — an unusually small load for the 
Paradise Special. Others were going out by train. 
But nineteen boys, aged from seven to thirteen, 
comprise a considerable amount of energy. Three 
or four of them had been to Paradise Farm before, 
and immediately took the lead in commenting on 
all that befell. Mickey Coyle was one of these, 
lamenting that as he would be thirteen in Septem- 
ber this would probably be his last visit. "But 
Fm lucky I ain't dead," he said philosophically. 



224 THE PARADISE SPECIAL 

'Tve a brother twenty years old who's dead. He 
died on my birthday. He had bronnical pneu- 
monia and typhoid and flu." 

We passed along the Parkway. ^' This is a Bolly- 
vard, ain't it?" said one. Entering the Park, 
another cried, ''Is this the country?" ''Sure, 
them's the Rocky Mountains," said Mickey in 
scorn. 

The first question in the minds of all the passen- 
gers was to know exactly how soon, and at what 
precise point they would be " in the country." The 
Park, though splendid enough, was not "the coun- 
try." As we sped along City Line road there was 
intense argument as to whether those on one side 
of the bus were in the country while those of us on 
the other side were still in the city. Another game 
that seemed to underlie all their thoughts was that 
this expedition was in some way connected with 
misfortune for Germany. Every time we over- 
hauled another car or truck — which happened not 
infrequently, for the Paradise Special travels at a 
good clip — that car was set down as German. 
Every time a swift vehicle passed us we were said 
to be in danger of being torpedoed. For some 
period of time we were conceived to be a load of 
German prisoners who had been captured by the 
Yanks. Then again one small enthusiast shouted 
out that we were ''bullsheviks" who had been 
arrested. 

Once satisfied that we were really in the country 
— and they were not quite at ease on this point 



THE PARADISE SPECIAL 225 

until the last of the suburban movies had been left 
behind — their attention focused itself on the ques- 
tion of apple trees. Even so experienced a Coun- 
try Weeker as Mickey (this was his fifth visit to 
the Farm) was vague on this point. To a city 
youngster almost every tree seems to be an apple 
tree. And everything that looks in the least red- 
dish is a strawberry. Unripe blackberries along the 
hedges were hailed with tumult and shouting as 
strawberries. Every cow with horns was regarded 
a little fearfully as a bull. And a cow in the un- 
familiar posture of lying down on top of a hill was 
pointed out (from a distance) as a "statue." 

After we passed Daylesford and Green Tree and 
the blue hills along the Schuylkill came into view, 
the cry, '^Look at that scenery!" became inces- 
sant. Any view containing hills is known as 
'^ scenery" to the Country- Weekers. When the 
scenery began eleven-3^ear-old Charley Franklin 
could contain himself no longer. He began to tear 
off the clean shirt and new shoes in which his 
mother had sent him from home, and, digging in 
his bundle, hauled out a blouse and tattered pair 
of sneakers that satisfied his idea of fitness for the 
great adventure. He proudly showed me his small 
bathing suit, carefully wrapped up in a Sunday 
comic supplement. His paper bag of cookies had 
long since been devoured, and the question of how 
soon another meal would come his way was begin- 
ning to worry him. Then we turned off the high 
road, past a signpost saying Paradise Farm, and 



226 THE PARADISE SPECIAL 

they were all on their toes. The long, echoing tun- 
nel under the high railway embankment was 
greeted with resounding cheers. More cheers for 
the swimming hole just beyond. We drew up at 
the foot of a steep flight of wooden steps leading 
up the hill. All piled out with yells. At the top of 
the stairs stood a rather glum group of forty 
similar urchins. These responded without much 
acclaim to the applause of the newcomers. They 
were the batch going home on the bus. Their week 
at Paradise was over. 

When we left, a few minutes later, the arrivals 
were already being assigned to their bunks in the 
various camp bungalows, and were looking around 
exultantly at the plentiful "scenery" and evi- 
dences of plentiful food to come. But the temper 
of the returning load was not quite so mirthful. 
They also had been up since an early hour, but 
play had languished as they had put on their 
clean clothes and had carefully bundled up their 
other stores in small newspaper wrappings. One 
small cynic told me that he had learned the nec- 
essary connection between green apples and castor 
oil. Another, with flaming red hair, seemed to 
have tears in his eyes. Whether these were due to 
green apples or to grief I could not determine. But 
the way they all shouted good-by to Mr. and Mrs. 
Steel (who have charge of the camp) showed how 
they appreciated their week's adventure. " Good- 
by swimming hole!" they shouted, and then 
"Good-by snakes!" explaining that they had 



THE PARADISE SPECIAL 227 

killed four small garter snakes in the meadow. 
They cheered up greatly when they saw a freight 
train puffing along the railway, and it was evident 
that we would have a fair race with that train all 
the way in to Overbrook. Immediately the train 
was set down as a German menace, and the cheer- 
ful chauffeur was implored to do his best for his 
country. It should be said that we beat the Ger- 
man train to Overbrook by about one hundred 
yards. 

The latter part of the ride was marked by a sud- 
den panic on the part of the passengers concerning 
sundry nickels and dimes which seemed to have 
disappeared, Nathan Schumpler, aged eight, 
turned his blouse pocket inside out a dozen times 
without finding the dime he was sure he had had. 
This was a terrible blow, because he told me he 
had lost a quarter through a crack in the porch the 
day before. This started all the others exploring. 
Knotted and far from clean handkerchiefs were 
hastily untied to make sure of the precious coinage 
for homeward carfare. At last Nathan found his 
dime, in the very pocket he had been turning up- 
side down for fifteen minutes. When they got 
back to Cherry street they were overjoj^ed to find a 
number of toy trains and tracks waiting on the 
floor. My last sight of the Country- Weekers was 
when they were playing with these while their 
guardians checked off their lists and made sure 
that each had carfare to take him home and knew 
how to get there. ''Yes," said the chauffeur, as he 



228 UP TO VALLEY GREEN 

lit a cigarette and watched them disperse, ''they're 
a great bunch. But if you want to hear noise, you 
should Hsten to the girls when they go out." 



UP TO VALLEY GREEN 
Madkigai. had a bad cold, and I was trumpeting 
with hay fever; and we set off for consolation in a 
tramp along the Wissahickon. In the drowsy still- 
ness of a late August afternoon, with a foreboding 
of autumn chill already in the air, we sneezed and 
coughed our way along the lovely ravine. Those 
lonely glades, that once echoed to the brisk drum- 
ming of horses' hoofs, rang with our miserable 
sternutations. The rocky gullies and pine-scented 
hillsides became for one afternoon the Vallombrosa 
of two valetudinarians. Thoughts of mortal per- 
ishment lay darkly upon us. We had lunched 
gorgeously with a charming host who was suffering 
with sciatica, and had described this affliction to 
us as a toothache as long as your leg. Then the 
Ridge avenue car carried us between two populous 
cities of the dead — Laurel Hill and Mount Vernon 
Cemeteries. Was this (we thought) the beginning 
of the end? 

The Ridge avenue car set us down at the mouth 
of Wissahickon creek. We each got out a clean 
handkerchief from a hip pocket and determined to 
make a brave fight against the dark angel. Under 
the huge brown arches of the Reading Railway, 
which have all the cheering gayety of an old 



UP TO VALLEY GREEN 229 

Roman aqueduct, we entered the valley of en- 
chantment. At this point it occurred to us that the 
ancient Romans were really prohibitionists at 
heart, since it was on aqueducts that they lavished 
the fullness of their structural genius. They never 
bothered with vinoducts. 

Perhaps Philad.elphians do not quite realize how 
famous the Wissahickon valley is. When my 
mother was a small girl in England there stood on 
her father's reading table a silk lampshade on 
which were painted little scenes of the world's love- 
liest beauty glimpses. There were vistas of Swiss 
mountains, Italian lakes, French cathedrals, 
Dutch canals, English gardens. And then, among 
these fabled glories, there was a tiny sketch of a 
scene that chiefly touched my mother's girlish 
fanc}^ She did not ever expect to see it, but often, 
as the evening lamplight shone through it, her eye 
would examine its dainty charm. It was called 
'^The Wissahickon Drive, Philadelphia, U. S. A." 
Many years afterward she saw it for the first time, 
and her heart jumped as hearts do when they are 
given a chance. 

The lower reach of the creek, with its placid 
green water, the great trees leaning over it, the 
picnic parties along the western marge, and the 
little boats splashing about, is amazingly hke the 
Thames at Oxford. I suppose all little rivers are 
much the same, after all; but the likeness here is 
so real that I cannot forbear to mention it. But 
one has an uneasy sense, as one walks and watches 



230 UP TO VALLEY GREEN 

the gleaming motors that flit by hke the whizz of 
the Ancient Mariner's crossbow, that the Wissa- 
hickon has seen better days. The days when the 
horse was king, when all the old inns were a bustle 
of rich food and drink, and the winter afternoons 
were a ringle-jingle of sleigh chimes. Then one 
turns away to the left, into the stillness of the 
carriage drive, where motors are not allowed, and 
the merry clop-clop of hoofs is still heard now and 
then. Two elderly gentlemen came swiftly by in a 
bright little gig with red wheels, drawn by a 
spirited horse. With what a smiling cheer they 
gazed about them, innocently happy in their life- 
long pastime! And yet there was a certain pathos 
in the sight. Two old cronies, they were Hving out 
the good old days together. Only a few paces on 
was the abandoned foundation of the Lotus Inn. 
And I remembered the vei-ses in which Madrigal 
himself, laureate of Philadelphia, has musicked the 
spell of the river drive — 

On winter nights ghost-music plays 
(The bells of long-forgotten sleighs) 

Along the Wissahickon. 
And many a silver-headed wight 
Who drove that pleasant road by night 
Sighs now for his old appetite 

For waffles hot and chicken. 
And grandmas now, who then were belles! 
How many a placid bosom swells 
At thought of love's old charms and spells 

Along the Wissahickon. 



UP TO \ allp:y green 231 

"But, my dear fellow," said one of these silver- 
headed wights to Madrigal when he had written 
the poem — ''it wasn't chicken, it was catfish that 
was famous in the Wissahickon suppers." ''All 
right," said Madrigal, "will you please have the 
name of the creek changed to Wissahatfish to fit 
the rhyme? " The necessities of poets must be con- 
sulted, unless we are to go over, pen, ink and 
blotter, to the blattings of vers Hbre. 

But a plague on the talk about "the good old 
days ! " Certainly in those times the road along the 
creek was never such a dreaming haunt of quiet- 
ness as it is today. An occasional proud damsel, 
cantering on horse, accompanied by a sort of Lou 
Tellegen groom; a rambling carriage or two, a few 
children paddling in the stream, and a bronzed fel- 
low galloping along with eager face — just enough 
movement to vary the sohtude. The creek pours 
smoothly over rocky shelves, churning in a white 
soapy triangle of foam below a cascade, or sUpping 
in clear green channels through an aisle of button- 
woods and incredibly slender tulip-poplars. Here 
and there is a canoe, teetering gently in a nook of 
shade, while Colin and Amaryllis are uttering 
bashful pleasantries each to other — innocent pla- 
giarisms as old as Eden, that seem to themselves 
so gorgeously new and dehcious. The road bends 
and slopes, under cliffs of fern and evergreen, 
where a moist pungency of balsam and turpentine 
breathes graciously in the nose of the sneezer. 
Gushing springs splash on the steep bank. 



232 UP TO VALLEY GREEN 

Already, though only the end of August, there 
was a faint tinge of bronze upon the foliage. We 
were at a loss to know whether this was truly a 
sign of coming fall, or some unnatural blight with- 
ering the trees. Can trees suffer from hay fever? 
At any rate we saw many dead limbs, many great 
trunks bald and gouty on the eastern cliffs and a 
kind of pallor and palsy in the color of the leaves. 
The forestry of the region did not seem altogether 
healthy, even to the ignorant eye. We have seen 
in recent years what a plague has befallen one 
noble species of tree: it would be a sorry thing if 
Philadelphia's dearest beauty spot were ravaged 
by further troubles. 

Talking and sneezing by turns, we came to 
Valley Green, where a placid caravanserai sits be- 
side the way, with a broad, white porch to invite 
the traveler, and a very feminine barroom inno- 
cently garnished with syphons of soda and lemons 
balanced with ladylike neatness on the necks of 
grape-juice bottles. Green canoes were drawn up 
on the river bank; a grave file of six small yellow 
ducklings was waddling toward the water; a tur- 
ke}'' (very similar in profile to Mr. Chauncey 
Depew) was meditating in the roadwa}^ A ban- 
tam cock and his dame made up in strut what 
they lacked in stature, and a very deaf gardener 
was trimming a garden of vivid phlox. Here was a 
setting that cried loudly for the hissing tea urn. 
Yet to think again of refreshment seemed disre- 
spectful to the noble lunch of a noble host, enjoyed 



ON THE SIGHTSEEING BUS 233 

only four hours earlier, and we passed stoically by, 
intending to go as far as Indian Rock, a mile fur- 
ther. But at a little waterfall, by the Wises Mill 
road, we halted with a common instinct. We 
turned backward and sought that gracious ve- 
randa at Valley Green. There, in a pot of tea and 
buttered toast with marmalade, we forgot our 
emunctory woes. 

We set match to tobacco and strode upward on 
Springfield road, through thickets where the sun- 
light quivered in golden shafts, toward the comely 
summits of Chestnut Hill. Let Madrigal have the 
last word, for he has known and loved this bonniest 
of creeks for forty years: 

There earliest stirred the feet of spring, 
There summer dreamed on drowsy wing; 
And autumn's glories longest cling 
Along the Wissahickon! 



ON THE SIGHTSEEING BUS 

A FEELING of sour depression, consequent upon 
mailing the third installment to Ephraim Lederer, 
led us to seek uphft and bhthe cheer. The sight- 
seeing bus was filled except one seat by the driver, 
and we hopped aboard. The car was generously 
freighted with Sir Knights and their ladies, here for 
a convention of Templars. There was also one 
baffled gentleman from South America, who strove 
desperately to understand what w^as happening to 
him. From some broken remarks he let fall we 



234 ON THE SIGHTSEEING BUS 

think he had boarded the vehicle under the im- 
pression that he was taking a taxi to a railway 
terminal, where he wanted to catch a train for 
New York, At any rate, when we approached 
Independence Hall he was heard to ask plaintively 
if this was Broad Street Station. He kept uttering 
this inquiry with increasing despondency through- 
out the voyage. 

It was a merry and humorous occasion. The 
gentleman who sits on a little camp stool in the 
prow of the bus and emits history and statistics 
through a megaphone is a genuine wag. His infor- 
mation is copious and uttered with amazing 
fluency. But we were particularly interested in 
the Sir Knight who slept peacefully through most 
of the ride, which was a long one, as we were held 
up by the big industrial parade on Broad street 
and had to take a long detour up Thirteenth street 
and Ridge avenue. During a spirited wrangle 
between our guide and the conductor of a trolley 
car, who asserted that we were nesting on his rails 
and would not let him pass, the drowsy Knight 
awoke and took a keen interest in the proceedings. 
Otherwise he will look back on the tour in a 
pleasantly muddled haze of memory. 

The pathetic zeal and eagerness with which the 
passengers hang upon the guide's words is worthy 
of high praise. It is an index of our national pas- 
sion for self -improvement. But after two hours of 
continuous exhortation we began to wonder how 
much of it would stick in their minds. The follow- 



ON THE SIGHTSEEING BUS 235 

ing, we imagine, is not an unfair representation of 
the jumbled wslj in which they will remember it: 

Guide: Observation car now leaving Keith's 
million-dollar theatre for a systematic tour of the 
City of Brotherly Love. As soon as WiUiam Penn 
had taken possession of the land he laid plans for a 
large city at the junction of the Drexel and Biddle 
famihes. On your left you see the site where Ben- 
jamin Frankhn, the first postmaster general, dis- 
covered the great truth that a special deUvery 
letter does not arrive any faster than the ordinary 
kind. Also on your left is Black's Hotel, where 
Benedict Arnold was married. On your right is 
Independence Hall, the office of the only Demo- 
cratic newspaper published in the city. Further 
down this street is the Delaware river, which sepa- 
rates the city from Camden, the home of the 
largest talking soup factory in the world. 

We are now turning north on Fifth street, ap- 
proaching Market street, the city's fashionable 
residential thoroughfare. Directly underneath 
your comfortable seats in this luxurious car pass 
the swift conveyances of the subway, forming the 
cheapest entrance into the great department 
stores. By means of this superb subterranean pas- 
sageway ocean steamers arrive and depart daily 
from all ports of the globe. On your right observe 
old Christ Church burial ground, all the occupants 
of which were imported from England. Under the 
large flat slab lies Benjamin Franklin, the first 

i6 



236 ON THE SIGHTSEEING BUS 

postmaster general, and his wife, the beautiful 
Rebecca Gratz, the heroine of Walter Scott's 
novel, ''Hugh Wynne." Now touring past the 
Friends and Quakers' meeting house, the birth- 
place of Old Glory. On your left the Betsy Ross 
house, occupied by 1600 poor orphan boys. Not 
far from here is the Black Horse Tavern, the fa- 
vorite worshiping place of General George Wash- 
ington 

Touring west on Market street. Directly in 
front is the tower of the City Hall, 36 feet in 
height, surmounted by the statue of Russell H. 
Con well. The building with the dome is Mr. 
Cattell, the city statistician, the author of the 
famous baseball poem, ''Acres of Diamonds." 
The vast edifice on your left is Temple Universitj^ 
founded by Stephen Girard, the originator of the 
price "$1,98, marked down from $2." Here we 
make an interesting detour to avoid the congestion 
on Broad street. On your right the residence of 
the late Doctor Munyon, the famous hair restorer, 
the man who said that every self-respecting man 
should have a roof garden of his own. This is the 
city of homes: there are 375,000 single homes in 
the city, each one equipped with the Httle instru- 
ment you will notice attached to the second-story 
windows. This is called a Busybody, and is a 
reflecting mirror used to tell when the rent col- 
lector is at the front door. On your right is the 
North Penn Bank, where Benjamin Franklin flew 



ON THE SIGHTSEEING BUS 237 

his famous kited check, extracting electricity from 
the bank examiners. 

We are now approaching Fairmount Park, the 
largest pubhc playground in the world. On your 
left is the aquarium, the local headquarters of the 
Anti-Saloon League. It is open to the public six 
days a week and to the fish at all times. In this 
aquarium is held the annual regatta of the Schuyl- 
kill Navy. The building in the distance with the 
dome is Horticultural Hall, filled with all manner 
of weird tropical visitors. This commodious tun- 
nel was carved out of the solid rock of the Vare 
organization by J. Hampton Moore, the well- 
known sculptor of public opinion. Across the 
river is the Zoological Garden, the summer resi- 
dence of Robert Morris, the well-known cigarette 
maker. On your right, carved out of sandstone, 
are the hf elike figures of Tom Robins and the other 
three members of the committee of 1000, im- 
mortalized in Edgar Allan Poe's poem ''Tam o' 
Shanter." Returning down the Parkway we pass 
the magnificent grand stands erected at the time 
of the Centennial Exposition and maintained ever 
since for the resuscitation of those unable to get 
seats on the Market street trolleys. I thank you 
for your kind attention and have here some nice 
postal cards — 



238 SEPTEMBER AFTERNOON 



SEPTEMBER AFTERNOON 
What an afternoon it was ! Sunshine and blue 
sky, blended warmth and crispness, the wedding of 
summer and autumn. Sunshine as tender as 
Cardinal Mercier's smile, northern breeze sober as 
the much-harassed lineaments of the Tomsmith. 
Citizens went about their business ''daintily en- 
folded in the bright, bright air," as a poet has put 
it. Over the dome of the postoffice, where the 
little cups of Mr. Bhss's wind gauge were spinning 
merrily, pigeons' wings gleamed white in the serene 
emptiness. The sunlight twinkled on lacquered 
Umousines in dazzles of brightness, almost as vivid 
as the ''genuine diamonds" in Market street show 
windows. Phil Warner, the always lunching book- 
seller, was out snapping up an oyster stew. Men of 
girth and large equator were watching doughnuts 
being fried in the baker's windows on Chestnut 
street with painful agitation. The onward march of 
the doughnut is a matter for serious concern in cer- 
tain circles, particularly the circle of the waist hne. 
Strolling up Ninth street one was privileged to 
observe a sign of the times. A lunch room was 
being picketed by labor agitators, who looked 
comparatively unblemished by toil. They bore 
large signs saying: 

The C Restaurant 

Is Unfair to 
Organized Labor. 



SEPTEMBER AFTERNOON 239 

Side by side with these gentry marched two 
blonde waitresses from the lunch room, wearing an 
air of much bitterness and oilcloth aprons em- 
blazoned 

Our Employes Are NOT on Strike 
All Our Help Get Good Wages 
Some of the Waiters Want Our Women 
TO Quit So They May Take Their Places. 

"We're doing this of our own free will/' said one 
of these damsels to me. ' ' These guys never worked 
here. Our boss gives us good money and we're 
not going to walk out on him." She leaned a 
blazing lamp toward one of the prowling picketers, 
an Oriental of dubious valor. I would be sorry for 
the envoy if the lady spreads her lunch-hooks 
across the area by which his friends recognize him. 
Almost next door to this campaigning ground is 
the famous postal-card shop in which one may 
always read the secret palpitations of the public 
mind. The first card I noticed there said: 

Many Happy Returns of the Day 
What Day? Pay Day. 

Arch street seemed to be taking a momentary 
halt for lunch. On the sunny paths of old Christ 
Church burying ground a few meditators strolled 
to and fro, and one young couple were advancing 
toward the wooing stage on a shady bench. The 
lady was knitting a sweater, the swain arguing 
with persuasion. The Betsy Ross House, still 



240 SEPTEMBER AFTERNOON 

trailing its faded bunting and disheveled wreaths, 
looked more like an old curio shop than ever. One 
wishes the D. A. R. would give it a coat of paint 
and remove the somewhat confused sign POUR 
P ATRIA, A little further on one finds a sign 

Select Evening Trip 

Down the Delaware 

On Palace Steamer Thomas Clyde 

Theatrical Moonlight 

This reference to nautical pleasures brought it 
to my mind that I had never enjoyed a voyage on 
the palace ferries of the Vine street crossing, and I 
moved in that direction. On Front above Arch 
one meets the terminus of the Frankford L, a 
tangle of salmon-colored girders. Something per- 
ilous, I could not see just what, was evidently 
going on, for a workman in air shouted, ''Watch 
yourself ! ' ' This terse phrase is one of the triumphs 
of the American language, as is also the remark I 
heard the other evening. It referred to a certain 
publican who conducts a speak-easy at an ad- 
dress I shall not name. This pubhcan had appar- 
ently got into an argument solvable only by the 
laying on of hands, and had emerged bearing an 
eye severely pulped. ''Some one's been workin' on 
him," was the comment of one of his customers. 

Watching myself with caution, I dodged down 
the steep stairs by which Cherry street descends 
from Front to Delaware avenue. In the vista of 
this narrow passage appeared the sharp gray bow 



SEPTEMBER AFTERNOON 241 

of the United States transport Santa Teresa. The 
wide space along the docks was a rumble of traffic, 
as usual : wagons of golden bananas, sacks of pea- 
nuts on the pavement. But along the waterside 
bulwark were the customary groups of colored 
citizens shooting dice. Crap, I surmise, is a truly 
reverent form of worship: nowhere else does one 
hear the presiding deities of the congregation ad- 
dressed with such completely fervent petition. A 
lusty snapping of fingers and an occasional cry of 
''Who thinks he feels some?" rose from one group 
of happy competitors. Here again the student of 
manners may notice a familiar phenomenon, the 
outward thrust of the negro toe. It seems that the 
first thing our brother does on buying a new pair of 
shoes is cut out a section of leather so that his out- 
most phalange may sprout through. 

The tranquil upper deck of the Race street rec- 
reation pier is a goodly place to sit and survey the 
shining sweep of the river. The police boat Ash- 
bridge lies there, and one may look down on her 
burnished brasses, watch the tugs puffing up and 
down, and the panorama of shipping from 
Kaighn's Point to a big five-masted schooner 
drawn up at Cramps. 

Approaching the Vine street ferry a mood of 
reckless vagabondage is hkely to seize the way- 
farer. Posters inform that the Parisian FHtters 
mth ''40 French Babies 40" are in town, and one 
feels convinced that life still teems with irre- 
sponsible gaiety. A savor of roasting peanuts 



£42 SEPTEMBER AFTERNOON 

spreads upon the air. Buying a bag, one darts 
aboard the antique ship Columbia, built in 1877, 
and still making the perilous voyage to Cooper's 
Point. 

There is an air of charming leisure about the 
Vine street ferry. Two mules, attached to a 
wagon, waved their tall ears in a friendly manner 
as we waited for the saihng date to arrive, and I 
tried to feed them some peanuts. All the mules 
I have ever been intimate with were connoisseurs 
of goobers, but somewhat to my chagrin these 
animals seemed suspicious of the offer. After sev- 
eral unavailing efforts to engage their appetites 
their amused charioteer informed me that he 
didn't think they hardly knew what peanuts were. 
These dehghtful mules watched me with an air of 
embarrassing intensity throughout the crossing. 
They had quite the air of ladies riding in a Pull- 
man car whose gaze one has inadvertently inter- 
rupted and who have misconstrued the accident. 

These mules were so entertaining that I almost 
forgot to study the river. On the Camden side 
I was somewhat tempted to go exploring, but a 
friendly seaman assured me the Columbia would 
shortly return to her home port and entreated me 
not to allow myself to be stranded abroad. So all J 
have to report of Cooper's Point is a life-size 
wooden figure of a horse near the ferry slip. Then 
we made the return trip over the sparkling beer- 
colored water, speaking a sister vessel of the 
Shackamaxon route. 



SEPTEMBER AFTERNOON 243 

There is much to catch the eye on a ramble up 
Vine street from the river, but probably most in- 
teresting is a very unexpected stable about num- 
ber 120. Passing under an archway, one finds a 
kind of rural barnyard scene; great wooden sheds 
on each side of an elbow alley, with lines of wagons 
laid away. There is an old drinking trough of 
clear water, horses stand munching in the sun- 
shine, and a queer tangle of ragged roofs and 
small windows overhangs this old-fashioned scene. 
A few doors further, on is an equally unexpected 
sign in a barber shop windoAv : Cups and Leeches 
Apphed. One also finds a horseshoeing forge in 
full blast, with patient animals leaning their heads 
against the wall and rosy irons glowing in the 
darkness. With similar brightness shone a jug of 
beer that I saw a man carrying across the street at 
the corner of Fifth. The sunlight sparkled upon 
the bright brown brew, and as peanuts are thirst}^ 
fodder I pushed through the swinging doors. 



244 BROAD STREET STATION 



BROAD STREET STATION 
Broad street station is to me a place of ex- 
traordinary fascination. Among the cloudy mem- 
ories of early childhood it stands solidly, a home of 
thunders and shouting, of gigantic engines with 
their fiery droppings of coal and sudden jets of 
steam. It was a place which in a dehghted sense of 
adventure was closely mixed with fear. I remem- 
ber being towed along, as a very small urchin, 
among throngs of hasty feet and past the prodi- 
gious glamour of those huge wheels and pistons. 
(Juvenile eyes are very close to the ground.) 
Then, arrived within, the ramping horses carved 
opposite the head of the stairs and the great map 
on the northern wall were a glorious excitement to 
my wondering gaze. Nowadays, when I ramble 
about the station its enchantment is enhanced by 
the recollection of those early adventures. And as 
most people, when passing through a station, are 
severely intent upon their own problems and little 
conscious of scrutiny, it is the best of places to 
study the great human show. Mr. Joseph Pennell, 
in a thrilling drawing, has given a perfect record 
of Broad street's hghts and tones that linger in the 
eye — the hurdling network of girders, the patter- 
ing files of passengers, the upward eddies of smoke. 
A sense of baffling excitement and motion keeps 
the mind alert as one wanders about the station. 
In the dim, dusky twilight of the trainshed this is 



BROAD STREET STATION 245 

all the more impressive. A gray-silver haze hangs 
in the great arches. Against the brightness of the 
western opening the locomotives come gliding in 
with a restful relaxation of effort, black indistin- 
guishable profiles. The locomotives are the only 
restful things in the scene — they and the red- 
capped porters, who have the priestly dignity of 
oracles who have laid aside all earthly passions. 
Most of the human elements wear the gestures of 
eagerness, struggle and perplexity. The Main 
Line commuters, it is true, seem to stroll train- 
ward like a breed apart, w4th an air of leisurely 
conquest and assurance. They have the bearing of 
veterans who have conquered the devils of trans- 
portation and hold them in leash. But this superb 
carelessness is only factitious. Some day their 
time will come and they will fall like the rest of us. 
They will career frantically to and fro, dash to 
information desk and train bulletin, rummage for 
tickets and wipe a beaded brow. What gesture, 
incidentally, is so significantly human as that of 
mopping the forehead? If I were a sculptor at 
work on a symbolic statue of Man I would carve 
him with troubled and vacant eyes, dehydrating 
his brow with a handkerchief. 

Take your stand by the train gate a few mo- 
ments before the departure of the New York ex- 
press. What a medley of types, and what a com- 
mon touch of anxiety and wistfulness makes them 
kin! Two ladies are bidding each other a pro- 
longed farewell. ''Now, remember, 7 Rowland 



^46 BROAD STREET STATION 

street, Cambridge," says the departer. ''Be sure 
to write!" A feverish man rushes back from the 
train, having forgotten something, and fights his 
way against the Une which is fihng through the 
gate. Another man hunts dismally through all his 
pockets for his ticket, rocking gently and thought- 
fully on his heels. The ticket seems to have van- 
ished. He pushes his hat back on his forehead and 
says something to the collector. This new posture 
of his hat seems to aid him, for in another half 
minute the ticket appears in a pocket that he has 
already gone through several times. The official 
cons his watch every five seconds. A clerk, 
apparently from one of the ticket windows, rushes 
up with a long strip ticket. There is some question 
about a sailor with a furlough ticket to Providence. 
Has he gone through? Haven't seen him. The 
gateman claps the gate to and switches off the 
light. Three other men come dashing up and are 
let through by the kindness of the usher. Then 
comes the sailor galloping along with a heavy suit- 
case. Here he is! Plere's your ticket! Again the 
gate is opened and the navy man tears down the 
platform. The train is already moving, but he 
just makes it. Far out, in the bright sunlight be- 
yond the station, the engine can be seen pulling 
out, ejecting a stiff spire of smoke and horizontal 
billows of steam. 

At the same time rumbles in the hourly express 
from New York. Watch the people come out. 
Here is the brisk little man with a brown bag, who 



BROAD STREET STATION 247 

always leads the crowd. The men from the 
smoker are first, puffing pipes or cigars. They all 
seem to know exactly where they want to go and 
push on relentlessly. After the main body of 
travelers come the Pullman passengers, usually 
followed by porters. Here is a girl in a very neat 
blue suit. Her porter carries an enormous black 
hat box painted with very swagger stripes of green. 
She is pretty, in a rather frank way, but too dusty 
with powder. An actress, one supposes. A tall 
young man steps out from the crowd, something 
very rakish about him, too. She looks surprised. 
''Nice of me to meet you, wasn't it?" he says. 
They w^alk off together, and one notices the really 
admirable hang of her blue skirt, just reaching her 
fawn spats. Sorry she uses so much powder. Curi- 
ous thing; the same j^oung chap was back again 
an hour later, this time to meet a man on the next 
New York train. They both wore brightly burn- 
ished brown shoes and seemed to have completely 
mastered life's perplexities. All these little dra- 
mas were enacted to a merry undertone of con- 
stant sound : the clear chime of bells, the murmur 
and throb of hissing steam, the rumble of baggage 
trucks, the slither of thousands of feet. 

There is not much kissing done when people 
arrive from New York, but if you will linger about 
the gate when the Limited gets in from Chicago 
you will see that humanity pays more affectionate 
tribute to friends arriving from that strange coun- 
try. There was one odd little group of three. A 



248 BROAD STREET STATION 

man and a woman greeted another lady who 
arrived on the Chicago train. The two women 
kissed with a luxurious smacking. Then the man 
and the arrival kissed. The Chicago lady wore an 
enormous tilted hat with plumes. "Well, I'm 
here/' she said, but without any great enthusiasm. 
The man was obviously frightfully glad to see her. 
But stand how he would, she kept the slant of her 
hat between her face and him. He tried valiantly 
to get a straight look at her. She would not meet 
his gaze. He put his head on one side astonishingly 
like a rooster, and his whole attitude expressed an 
earnest desire to please. When he spoke to her she 
answered to the other woman. She handed him 
her baggage checks without looking at him. Then 
she pointed to a very heavy package at her feet. 
With a weary resignation he toted it, and they 
moved away. 

Inside the station the world is divided sharply 
into two halves. On the trainward side all is bustle 
and stir; the bright colors of news stands and 
flower stalls, brisk consultation of timetables at 
the information desk, little telephone booths, 
where lights wink on and off. In one of these 
booths, with the door open for greater coolness, a 
buyer is reporting to his home office the results of 
an out-of-town trip. ''How much did you sold 
of that?" he says. ''He offered me a lot — pretty 
nice leather — he wanted seventy-five — well, listen, 
finally I offered him sixty-five — Oh, no, no, no, he 



BROAD STREET STATION 249 

claims it's a dollar grade — well, I don't know, it 
might be ninety cent maybe." 

But abaft the big stairway a quiet solemnity 
reigns. The long benches of the waiting room 
seem a kind of Friends' meeting. Momently one 
expects to see some one rise and begin to speak. 
But it is not the peace of resignation; it is the 
peace of exhaustion. These are the wounded who 
have dragged themselves painfully from the onset, 
stricken on the great battlefield of Travel. Here 
one may note the passive patience of humanity, 
and also how pathetically it hoards its little pos- 
sessions. A lady rises to get a drink of water. 
With what zealous care she stacks all her impedi- 
ments in a neat pile — umbrella, satchel, handbag, 
shawl, suitcase, tippet, raincoat and baby — and 
confides them to her companion. A gust of that 
characteristic railroad restaurant odor drifts out- 
ward from the dining room — a warm, soupy blend 
of browned chicken-skin and crisp roll-crust. On 
one end of the bench are three tall bronzed dough- 
boys, each with two service stripes and the red 
chevron. They have bright blue eyes and are care- 
fully comparing their strip tickets, which seem 
nearly a yard long. A lady in very tight black 
suede slippers stilts out of the dining room. Like 
every one else in the waiting room she walks as 
though her feet hurt her. The savor of food is 
blown outward by electric fans. The doughboys 
are conferring together. They have noticed two 
lieutenants dining at one of the white-draped 



250 THE SHORE IN SEPTEMBER 

tables. This seems to enrage them. Finally they 
can stand it no longer. Their vast rawhide 
marching boots go clumping into the dining room. 
Every now and then the announcer comes to the 
head of the stairway and calls out something about 
a train to Harrisburg, Altoona, Pittsburgh and 
Chicago. There is a note of sadness in his long- 
drawn wail, as though it would break his heart if 
no one should take this train, which is a favorite of 
his. A few weary casuals hoist themselves from 
the benches, gather their belongings anew and 
stagger away. 



THE SHORE IN SEPTEMBER 

The sands are lonely in the fall. On those broad 
New Jersey beaches, where the rollers sprawl in- 
ward in ridges of crumbling snow, the ocean looks 
almost wistfully for its former playmates. The 
children are gone, the small brown legs, the toy 
shovels and the red tin pails. The familiar figures of 
the summer season have vanished : the stout ladies 
who sat in awninged chairs and wrestled desper- 
ately to unfurl their newspapers in the wind ; the 
handsome mahogany-tanned lifesavers, the vam- 
perinoes incessantly drying their tawny hair, the 
corpulent males of dark complexion wearing 
ladies' bathing caps, the young men playing a de- 
generate baseball with a rubber sphere and a bit 
of shingle. All that life and excitement, fed upon 
hot dogs and vanilla cones, anointed with cold 



THE SHORE IN SEPTEMBER 251 

cream and citronella, has vanished for another 
year. 

But how pleasant it is to see the town (it is 
Fierceforest we have in mind) taking its own vaca- 
tion, after laboring to amuse its visitors all summer 
long. Here and there in the surf you will see a 
familiar figure. That plump lady, lathered by 
sluicing combers as she welters and wambles upon 
Neptune's bosom, is good Frau Weintraub of the 
delicatessen, who has been frying fish and chow- 
dering clams over a hot stove most of July and 
August, and now takes her earned repose. Yonder 
is the imposing bulge of the real estate agent, who 
has been too busy selling lots and dreaming hotel 
sites to visit the surf hitherto. Farther up the 
shore is the garage man, doing a little quiet fishing 
from the taffrail of a deserted pier. The engineer 
of the "roller coaster" smokes a cigar along the 
deserted boardwalk and discusses the league of na- 
tions with the gondolier-in-chief of the canals of 
Ye Olde Mill. The hot-dog expert, whose merry 
shout, ''Here they are, all red hot and fried in 
butter!" was wont to echo along the crowded 
arcade, has boarded up his stand and departed 
none knows where. 

There is a tincture of grief in the survey of all 
this liveliness coflaned and nailed down. Even the 
gambols of Fierceforest's citizens, taking their 
ease at last in the warm September surf, cannot 
wholly dispel the mournfulness of the observer. 
There is something dreadfully glum in the merry- 
17 



252 THE SHORE IN SEPTEMBER 

go-round seen through its locked glass doors. All 
those gayly caparisoned horses, with their bright 
Arabian housings, their flowing manes and tossing 
heads and scarlet-painted nostrils, stand stilled in 
the very gesture of glorious rotation. One remem- 
bers what a jolly sight that carrousel was on a 
warm evening, the groaning pipes of the steam- 
organ chanting an adorable ditty (w^e don't know 
what it is, but it's the tune they always play at 
the movies when our favorite Dorothy Gish comes 
on the screen), children laughing and holding tight 
to the wooden manes of the horses, and flappers 
with their pink dresses swirling, clutching for the 
brass ring that means a free ride. All this is 
frozen into silence and sleep, like a scene in a 
fairy tale. It is very sad, and we dare not contem- 
plate the poor little silent horses too long. 

Bitterly does one lament the closing of the 
Boardwalk auction rooms, which were a perpetual 
free show to those who could not find a seat in 
the movies. There was one auctioneer who looked 
so like Mr. Wilson that when we saw his earnest 
gestures we always expected that the league of 
nations would be the subject of his harangue. But 
on entering and taking a seat (endeavoring to 
avoid his eye when he became too persuasive, for 
fear some involuntary gesture or the contortions of 
an approaching sneeze would be construed as a bid 
for a Chinese umbrella stand) we always found 
that it was a little black box full of teacups that 
was under discussion. He would hold one up 



THE SHORE IN SEPTEMBER 253 

against an electric bulb to show its transparency. 
When he found his audience unresponsive he 
would always say, ''You know I don't have to do 
this for a living. If you people don't appreciate 
goods that have quality, I'm going to pack up 
and go to Ocean City." But he never went. Al- 
most every evening, chagrined by some one's 
failure to bid properly for a cut-glass lady-finger 
container or a porcelain toothbrush-rack, he 
would ask the attendant to set it aside. "I'll buy 
it myself," he would cry, and as he kept on buying 
these curious tidbits for himself throughout the 
summer, we used to wonder what his wife would 
say when they all arrived. 

Along the quiet Boardwalk we saunter, as the 
crisp breeze comes off the wide ocean spaces. 
Bang! bang! bang! sound the hammers, as the 
shutters go up on the beauty parlor, the toy shop, 
the shop where sweet-grass baskets were woven, 
and the stall where the little smiling doll known as 
Helene, the Endearing Beach Vamp, was to be won 
by knocking down two tenpins with a swinging 
pendulum. How easy it was to cozen the public 
with that! A bright red star was painted at the 
back of the pendulum's swing, and the natural 
assumption of the simple competitor was that by 
aiming at that star he would win the smiling 
Helene. Of course, as long as one aimed at the 
star success was im^possible. The Japanese dealers, 
with the pertinacity of their race, are almost the 
last to linger. Their innocent little gaming boards, 



254 THE SHORE IN SEPTEMBER 

their fishponds where one angles for counterfeit 
fish and draws an eggcup or a china cat, according 
to the number inscribed on the catch, their rou- 
lette wheels ("Ten Cents a Chance — No Blanks") 
— all are still in operation, but one of the shrewd 
orientals is packing up some china at the back of 
the shop. He knows that trade is pretty well done 
for this season. We wondered whether he would go 
down to the beach for a swim before he left. He 
has stuck so close to business all summer that per- 
haps he does not know the ocean is there. There 
is another thrifty merchant, too, whose strategy 
comes to our attention. This is the rolling-chair 
baron, who has closed his little kiosque, but has 
taken care to paint out the prices per hour of his 
vehicles, and has not marked any new rates. 
Cautious man, he is waiting until next summer to 
see what the trend of prices will be then. 

Across the fields toward the inlet, where the 
grasses have turned rusty bronze and pink, where 
goldenrod is minting its butter-yellow sprays and 
riotous magenta portulaccas seed themselves over 
the sandy patches, the rowboats are being dragged 
out of the canal and laid up for the winter. The 
sunburned sailorman who rents them says he has 
had a good season — and he "can't complain." He 
comes chugging in with his tiny motorboat, towing 
a string of tender-feet who have been out tossing 
on the crabbing grounds for a couple of hours, 
patiently lowering the fishheads tied on a cord and 
weighted with rusty bolts. His patient and ener- 



THE SHORE IN SEPTEMBER 255 

getic wife who runs the Uttle candy and sarsa- 
parilla counter on the dock has ended her labors. 
She is glad to get back to her kitchen: during the 
long, busy summer days she did her family cooking 
on an oil stove behind the counter. The captain, 
as he likes to be called, is about to make his annual 
change from mariner to roofer, the latter being 
his winter trade. ''It's blowing up for rain,'' he 
says, looking over his shoulder at the eastern sky. 
''I guess the season's pretty near over. I'll get 
up the rest of them boats next week." 

In September the bathing is at its best. Par- 
ticularly at sunset, when every one is at supper. 
To cross those wide fields of wiry grass that 
stretch down to the sand, is an amazement to the 
eye. Ahead of you the sea gleams purple as an 
Easter violet. The fields are a kind of rich palette 
on which every tint of pink, russet and bronze 
are laid in glowing variation. The softly wavering 
breeze, moving among the coarse stalks, gives the 
view a ripple and shimmer of color like shot silk. 
A naturalist could find hundreds of species of 
flowers and grasses on those sandy meadows. 
There are great clumps of some bushy herb that 
has already turned a vivid copper color, and 
catches the declining sunlight like burnished 
metal. There are flecks of yellow, pink and laven- 
der. A cool, strong odor rises from the harsh, 
knife-edged grasses — a curiously dry, brittle scent, 
familiar to all who have poked about sand 
dunes. 



^56 THE SHORE IN SEPTEMBER 

The beach itself, colored in the last flush of the 
level sun, is still faintly warm to the naked foot, 
after the long shining of the day; but it cools 
rapidly. The tide is coming in, with long, seething 
ridges of foam, each flake and clot of crumbled 
water tinged with a rose-petal pink by the red sun- 
set. All this glory of color, of movement, of un- 
speakable exhilaration and serenity, is utterly 
lonely. The long curve of the beach stretches 
away northward, where a solitary orange-colored 
dory is lying on the sand. The air is full of a 
plaintive piping of sea-birds. A gull flashes along 
the beach, with a pink glow on its snowy under- 
plumage. 

At that hour the water is likely to be warmer 
than the air. It may be only the curiously magical 
effect of the horizontal light, but it seems more 
foamy, more full of suds, than earlier in the day. 
Over the green top of the waves, laced and marbled 
with froth, slides a layer of iridescent bubble-wash 
that seems quite a different substance from the 
water itself — like the meringue on top of a lemon 
pie. One can scoop it up and see it winking in 
points of sparkling light. 

The waves come marching in. It is a calm sea, 
one would have said looking down from the dunes, 
but to the swimmer, elbowing his way under their 
leaning hollows, their stature seems tremendous. 
The sunlight strikes into the hills of moving water, 
filling them with a bluish spangle and tremor of 
brightness. It is worth while to duck underneath 



THE SHORE IN SEPTEMBER 257 

and look up at the sun from under the surface, to 
see how the hght seems to spread and clot and 
split in the water like sour cream poured into a cup 
of tea. The sun, which is so ruddy in the evening 
air, is a pale milky white when seen from under 
water. 

A kind of madness of pleasure fills the heart of 
the solitary sunset swimmer. To splash and riot in 
that miraculous color and tumult of breaking 
water seems an effective answer to all the griev- 
ances of earth. To float, feeling the poise and en- 
circling support of those lapsing pillows of liquid, 
is mirth beyond words. To swim just beyond the 
line of the big breakers, dropping a foot now and 
then to feel that bottom is not too far away — to 
sprawl inward with a swashing comber while the 
froth boils about his shoulders — to watch the light 
and color prismed in the curl and slant of every 
wave, and the quick vanishing of brightness and 
glory once the sun is off the sea — all this is the 
matter of poems that no one can write. 

The sun drops over the flat glitter of the inland 
lagoons; the violet and silver and rose-flushed 
foam are gone from the ocean; the sand is gray 
and damp and chilly. Down the line of the shore 
comes an airplane roaring through the upper 
regions of dazzling sunlight, with brightness on its 
varnished wings. The lighthouse at the Inlet has 
begun to twinkle its golden flash, and supper will 
soon be on the table. The solitary swimmer takes 
one last regretful plunge through a sluicing hill of 



258 THE SHORE IN SEPTEMBER 

green, and hunts out his pipe. He had left it, as 
the true smoker does, carefully filled, with a 
match-box beside it, in a dry hollow on the sand. 
Trailing a thread of blue reek, he plods cheerfully 
across the fields, taking care not to tread upon the 
small hoptoads that have come out to hail the 
evening. Behind him the swelling moon floats like 
a dim white lantern, penciling the darkening water 
with faint scribbles of light. 

But there are still a few oldtimers in Fierce- 
forest, cottagers who cling on until the first of 
October, and whose fraternal password (one ma}^ 
hear them saying it every time they meet) is 
'' Sure ! Best time of the year ! " Through the pink 
flush of sunrise you may see the husbands moving 
soberly toward the early commuters' train, the 
6 : 55, which is no longer crowded. (A month ago 
one had to reach it half an hour early in order to 
get a seat in the smoker.) Each one transports his 
satchel, and also curious bundles, for at this time 
of year it is the custom to make the husband carry 
home each week an instalment of the family bag- 
gage, to save excess when moving day comes. One 
totes an oilstove; another, a scales for weighing 
the baby. They trudge somewhat grimly through 
the thin morning twilight, going back for another 
week at office and empty house or apartment. 
Leaving behind them the warm bed, the little cot- 
tage full of life and affection, they taste for a 
moment the nostalgic pang that sailors know so 
well when the ship's bow cuts the vacant horizon. 



PUTTING THE CITY TO BED 259 

Over the purple rim of sea the sun juts its scarlet 
disk. You may see these solitary husbands halt a 
moment to scan the beauty of the scene. They 
stand there thoughtful in the immortal loneliness 
of dawn. Then they climb the smoker and 
pinochle has its sway. 



PUTTING THE CITY TO BED 

It was a delicious cool evening when I stroUed 
abroad to observe the town composing itself for 
slumber. The caustic Mrs. Trollope, who visited 
Philadelphia in 1830, complained bitterly that 
there was no carousal or cheer of any kind pro- 
ceeding in the highways after sunset : " The streets 
are entirely dark, scarcely a step is heard, and for 
a note of music, or the sound of mirth, I listened 
in vain." But the lady would find us much more 
volatile now. 

The Weather Man tries to set us a good example 
by pulling down the front of his little booth at 
Ninth and Chestnut soon after 10 o'clock, but 
there are few who take the hint. It was a night 
almost chilly — 67 degrees — a black velvety sky to 
the northward, diluted to a deep purple and blue 
where the moon was shining in the south. At 10.45 
letter writing was in full scratch along the counters 
of the main postoffice. Every desk was busy, the 
little stamp windows were lively caves of light. 
Hotel signs — the old signs that used to say 
ROOMS $1 UP, and now just say ROOMS— were 



260 PUTTING THE CITY TO BED 

beaconing along the street. Crowds were piling out 
of movies. The colored man who letters cards 
with delicate twirls of penmanship was setting up 
his little table on Market street. In spite of the 
cool air every soda fountain was lined with the 
customary gobs. The first morning papers were 
beginning to be screamed about the streets, with 
that hoarse urgency of yelling that always makes 
the simple-minded think that something fearful 
has happened. 

A crowd gathered hastily in front of a big office 
building on Chestnut street. Policemen sprang 
from nowhere. A Jefferson ambulance clanged up. 
Great agitation, and prolonged ringing of the bell 
at the huge iron-grilled front door. What's up? 
Finally appeared a man with blood spattered over 
his shirt and was escorted to the ambulance. The 
engineer had walked too near an electric fan and 
got his head cut. Lucky he didn't lose it alto- 
gether, said one watcher. 

Eleven o'clock. In a cigar store served by a 
smiling damsel, two attractive ladies were asking 
her if it would be safe for them to visit a Chinese 
restaurant a little farther up the street. '^ We're 
from out of town," they explained, "and all alone. 
We want some chop suey. Is that the kind of 
place ladies can go to?" The cigar saleslady ap- 
pealed to me, and I assured the visitors they would 
be perfectly serene. Perhaps if I had been more 
gallant I should have escorted them thither. Off 
they went, a little timorous. 



PUTTING THE CITY TO BED ^61 

Eleven fifteen. The first of the typical night- 
hawk motors begin to appear; huge runabouts, 
with very long bonnets and an air of great power. 
One of them, a vivid scarlet with white wheels, 
spins briskly round the City Hall. Trills and tink- 
lings of jazz clatter from second-story restaurants. 
But Chestnut street is beginning to calm down. 
Lights in shop windows are going off. The old 
veteran takes his seat on a camp-stool near Juniper 
street and begins to tingle his little bell merrily. 
If you drop something in his box he will tell you 
the sign of the zodiac under which you were born, 
prognosticate your lucky days and planetary hours 
and advise you when to take a journey. He ex- 
plained to me that this happened to be the night 
of Venus. I had been sure of it already after some 
scrutiny of the pavements. As the lights are 
dimmed along the street, the large goldfish in a 
Chestnut street cafe window grow more placid and 
begin to think of a little watery repose. 

Half-past eleven. The airy spaces round the 
City Hall are full of a mellow tissue of light and 
shadow. The tall lamp standards are like trees of 
great pale oranges. The white wagons of the 
birchbeer fleet are on their rounds. The seats 
where the band concerts are held are deserted save 
for one meditative vagrant, drooping with un- 
known woes. Swiftly flowing cars flit mysteriously 
round the curve and bend into the long expanse of 
North Broad street where their little red stern- 
lights twinkle beneath the row of silver arcs 



262 PUTTING THE CITY TO BED 

stretching away into the distance. Broad Street 
Station is comparatively quiet, though there is the 
usual person gazing up at the window lettered 
SCRIP CLERGY STOPOVERS COMMUTA- 
TION. He wonders what it means. I do not 
know, any more than he. Standing at the corner 
of the station the lights of the sky are splendid and 
serene. Over the Finance Building a light wispy 
plume of steam hovers and detaches itself, gleam- 
ing in the moonshine like a floating swan's feather. 
The light catches the curves of the trolley rails Hke 
ribbons of silver. 

Midnight. The population seems to have sorted 
itself into couples. Almost all the ladies in sight 
wear silk sports skirts, and walk with their escorts 
in a curiously slow swishing swing. Some of them 
may have been dancing all evening, and still pace 
with some of the rhythm of the waxed floor. In 
darkened banks are little gleams of orange light be- 
hind trellises of bars, where watchmen sit and 
grind away the long hours. Down the dark narrow 
channel of Sansom street it is very silent. The 
rear of a ten-cent store shows a gush of brightness, 
where some overhauling of stock is going on. The 
back door is open, and looking in I can see a riotous 
mouse darting about under the counters,, warily 
watching the men who are rearranging some dis- 
play. The Jefferson Hospital is silent, with occa- 
sional oblongs of light in windows. I seem to de- 
tect a whiff of disinfectants, and wonder how the 
engineer is getting on. 



PUTTING THE CITY TO BED 263 

Market street is still lively. A '^ dance orchard" 
emits its patrons down a long stair to the street. 
Down they come, gaily laughing. The male part- 
ners are all either gobs, who love dancing even 
more than ice cream soda; or youths with tilted 
straw hats of coarse weave, with legs that bend 
backward most oddly below the knee, very tightly 
and briefly trousered. Two doughboys with ace of 
spades shoulder insignia greet the emerging 
throng, showing little booklets for sale. They urge 
the girls to buy, with various arts of cajolery and 
bright-eyed persuasion. "Who'll buy a book?" 
they say, "forty short stories, put out by a 
wounded soldier." The girls all wear very exten- 
sive hats, and are notably pretty. "Which way 
do we go?" is the first question on reaching the 
street. It is usually the way to the nearest soda 
fountain. 

Twelve forty. The watering tank roars down 
Chestnut street, shedding a hissing tide from curb 
to curb. The fleet of To Hire night taxis wheel off 
one by one as fares leap in to escape from the de- 
luge, which can be heard approachmg far up the 
silent street. It is getting quiet, save in the all- 
night lunch rooms, where the fresh baking of 
doughnuts and cinnamon buns is being set out, 
and the workers of the night shift are streaming in 
for their varied and substantial meals. They eat 
leisurely, with loud talk, or reading the morning 
papers. 

One fifteen. The population consists mostly of 



PUTTING THE CITY TO BED 



small groups on corners waiting patiently for cars, 
which are rare after one o'clock. Chauffeurs sit in 
twos, gossipping over the fares of the evening. 
Along the curb of the Federal Building on Ninth 
street Unger a few resolute loungers, enjoying the 
calm of the night. A fruit stall man is wondering 
whether to trundle home. The pile of fresh dough- 
nuts in the lunch room is rapidly diminishing. 
Street cleaning trucks are on their nightly rounds. 
It's time to go to bed. 



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